What Causes Nursing Home Abuse
With nursing home abuse on the rise, you might find yourself alarmed if this kind of abuse is not stopped. But change cannot happen until the reasons why this abuse is happening are examined, and any good nursing home abuse lawyer such as the ones available at Davis and Brusca LLC are going to be able to ask and simply explain why nursing home abuse happens to what happens to.
There are many reasons why nursing home abuse occurs, and the causes of these abuses depend upon the nursing home, the individual, the quality of the nursing home, and the caliber of the staff in the facility management.
It’s a lot of variables to look up but let’s talk about them.
A nursing home that is lacking resources and funding is going to be unable to provide professional management and higher people with a good track record. This is going to cause the quality of care to suffer and is going to cause neglect and abuse to be part of the environment. Not only that but the type of resident in the care that they require can have a hand in what kind of abuse they undergo if they undergo any abuse at all. High needs patients, women, veterans and LGBT residents are going to be at greater risk for being abused while in a nursing home, and of course patients with severe physical or cognitive disabilities are also going to be target for nursing home abuse and neglect.
So let’s take a quick look at some of the reasons why experts say nursing home abuse occurs, this is not a fuller exhaustive list, it is simply a list of the most common reasons acknowledged by experts today.
- Staffing shortages
- Lack of staff training
- Staff has inadequate experience
- Underpaid staffing
- Poor supervision, management and accountability measures
- Individual caregiver issues
- Individual resident risk factor
The understaffed workforce is a big issue because nursing homes are only able to operate to the best of their abilities if they have the staff required to fulfill these duties. When a nursing home is understaffed and they have multiple staff members dealing with multiple things across the building, things can get messy. Staff shortages cause responsibilities to drop, and certain duties just don’t get done at all. This is because staff members have to start prioritizing the needs of residents over others, and this kind of neglect often causes long-term failure to provide basic needs which can lead to abuse being constituted.
Under trained staff, means that if a nursing home has a full line of staff but they are not trained, they do not have the experience needed to perform all of their job duties, which means they cannot receive ongoing training and adapt to the shifting needs of residents because they simply don’t have the training. Undertrained staff has many types of forms such as not having the required educational and vocational training to work in a nursing home, not having a work experience in a nursing home, not been trained in the specific policies of the nursing home you are at, the lack of understanding the rights of the residents, the lack of on-the-job training and development, and adequate training for specific disabilities and needs.
Reach out to a nursing home abuse lawyer today if you think that your nursing home is abusing your loved one.