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When you place an elderly family member in a nursing home, you expect caregivers to provide them with daily care and attention. Unfortunately, caregivers and facilities may violate this trust and abuse your loved one. Read on to learn more about nursing home abuse and how poor hygiene and nursing home abuse are often connected.
What Is Nursing Home Abuse?
Nursing home abuse refers to all types of elder abuse and neglect committed by professional healthcare workers and caregivers. Nursing homes and other assisted care facilities must provide their residents with care that meets a certain standard. This standard of care is, at a minimum, the level of care one would reasonably expect in a similar environment. Nursing home abuse and neglect include both actions and inactions that cause the care your loved one receives to fall below this standard.
How Are Poor Hygiene and Nursing Home Abuse Connected?
You expect that a nursing home facility will care for the basic needs of your loved one. If a nursing home resident’s hygiene is not looked after, that can be a form of nursing home neglect. Poor hygiene can result in severe injuries like bedsores or urinary tract infections. Other hygiene issues include poor oral health, lack of regular bathing, and inadequate cleaning of resident facilities. When multiple residents exhibit poor hygiene, this often leads to the spread of disease and severe infection in residents.
Nursing home residents often cannot care for themselves, so we trust caregivers to assist them with daily tasks. Nursing home abuse, like poor hygiene, affects a victim physically and can be emotionally distressing and humiliating.
Contact an attorney immediately if you have a loved one at a nursing home with poor hygiene. Poor hygiene is a preventable problem and must be addressed to keep your loved one safe and healthy.
Other Signs of Nursing Home Abuse
In addition to poor hygiene, there are a number of common signs of nursing home abuse, including:
- Broken bones and fractures;
- Bruises, burns, and welts on the skin;
- Cuts and lacerations;
- Dehydration and malnutrition;
- Facial and dental injuries; and
- Falls that cause fractures or head injuries.
Sometimes the signs of abuse or neglect are apparent if they cause physical injuries. However, you must also watch for signs of emotional abuse. If your loved one becomes more withdrawn or depressed or exhibits other changes in their mental health, contact an attorney immediately.
Contact Us
At Senior Justice Law Firm, we concentrate on only one area of law—elder abuse and neglect. We are one of the only law firms in the United States that focuses on suing nursing homes, assisted living facilities, and hospitals for patient neglect. We are dedicated to achieving justice for loved ones who have suffered severe injuries, neglect, and wrongful death at the hands of those who were supposed to care for them. Contact Senior Justice Law Firm today to speak with one of our compassionate and qualified nursing home abuse attorneys. There is no obligation to pursue your case, and the consultation is free.
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