Heartland of Galesburg

This doesn’t mean you should eschew nursing homes completely. Many provide excellent, compassionate care. It only means you should be more discerning in your choice of facility and understand the risk factors that increase the likelihood of abuse.

For instance, residents are more likely to suffer abuse and neglect in nursing homes that are understaffed. Overworked staff make dangerous mistakes, cut corners, or take out their frustrations on defenseless residents. Abuse is also more common when caregivers lack necessary qualifications and training. Many nursing homes hire cheaper CNAs to replace skilled nurses, but that means they don’t always have the proper expertise to treat and interact with residents appropriately.

Another issue occurs when nursing homes do not have appropriate abuse and neglect prevention procedures in place. Most staff will not purposely harm elderly residents, but if they are not trained in best practices to promote resident safety, they may inadvertently hurt someone.

Nursing homes should have a variety of policies in place to prevent illness and injury with proper transferring techniques, sanitation, ulcer pressure care, respiratory care, and more. Staff should also be trained to keep proper documentation of health issues, accidents, and interventions so resident care plans are kept up-to-date and carried out.

Finally, nursing homes should make it easy to report abuse. They should train staff to report signs of abuse and give residents and their families copies of their grievance procedure in case they have a complaint. There should also be a standard procedure for investigating abuse, reporting it to local authorities, and terminating perpetrators, with management showing a strong commitment to following through. Abuse is less likely to happen if predators know there are consequences for their actions.

If you want to do all you can to prevent a family member from suffering abuse or neglect in a nursing home, start by picking a nursing home that does all it can to create a safe environment. Of course, they all will say that they do that, so you need to look for proof. That means looking for demonstrations and results of having enough trained staff and comprehensive policies for the care and protection of residents. This might sound hard, impossible even, but Levin & Perconti has found that if you do your research, it can be relatively easy.