Our elderly parents, grandparents, and other family members get the high-quality care and quality of life they need and deserve from the fantastic nurses, carers, and staff who work at most institutions. Nevertheless, institutions that don't adhere to industry norms may experience abuse and neglect.
The nursing home red flags listed below should be taken into consideration while selecting a facility for your loved one.
The personnel of the nursing home doesn't talk to the residents
During your first visit to a potential nursing home, observe the staff's interactions with the residents. Are they interacting with the residents? Or does the staff usually gather in a group and remain quiet? Should the latter be accurate, you should reconsider.
A competent nursing home staff takes the time to get to know each patient and engage in conversation.
Unfavourable Reviews Regarding the Nursing Home
Usually, there is little incentive for residents and their families to fabricate negative evaluations of a nursing home. If you look up a facility online and find a lot of negative reviews, chances are the remarks are accurate or grounded in reality.
Unclean Establishment
Examine the facility for signs of disarray; this is a good indicator that staff members and careers may be neglecting their other caregiving duties. Furthermore, unclean facilities might serve as havens for infections and diseases.
In cases when elderly individuals' immune systems are compromised, this may be lethal.
Behavioural Shifts in Your Loved One
If your loved one is already in a nursing home, seeing how they behave might help you identify warning indicators of abuse or neglect.
For instance, observable behavioral changes in your loved one might indicate a problem.
Unanswered Calls for Assistance from Residents
Help requests from residents should always come first. Your loved one required more care and monitoring than you could provide for them on your own, which is why you transferred them to a nursing facility.
Unanswered resident requests for assistance may indicate that the institution is understaffed. In other situations, it could indicate that the personnel is not meeting your loved one's requirements.
Lack of Knowledge of Staff: You should be able to ask charge nurses and nursing assistants detailed questions regarding daily schedules, treatments, and procedures, and you should get a thorough response.
Suppose the employees are unable to respond to inquiries of this kind. In that case, they may lack sufficient training and are not adhering to standard operating procedures for quality care.
This also implies that the residents are not receiving the standard of care that they are due.
Absence of Private Evidence
An older adult is entitled to privacy with respect to their personal property. The absence of a safe or lockbox in a room increases the possibility of theft or financial misuse.
Employees Make Negative Remarks About Residents
Talking down to residents or speaking negatively about them on a frequent basis is an indication that the carer is verbally abusing them, and this may become worse when visitors are not around.
Use of Physical Restraint Indications
When you visit, have you seen any red marks, scratches, or bruises around your loved one's wrists and ankles? This may indicate that the nursing home personnel are physically restraining your loved one.
It is inappropriate and useless to physically restrain an older adult, except in the most dire circumstances.
The use of physical constraint may indicate a staff member's laziness, at best. In the worst scenario, this may indicate elder abuse.
The Employee Wouldn't Like to See You Alone with Your Special Someone
Any competent staff member should be aware that you visit the nursing home to see your loved one. This is not a good indicator if you're not able to see your loved one right away or, worse if staff members are observing you closely while you're there.
The staff may be trying to prevent your loved one from reporting abuse or neglect by not wanting to leave you alone. The same holds if the personnel at the assisted living facility denies you access to your loved one.
Loud Establishment
It is the right of residents to live in quiet quarters free from overbearing noise. If you often hear pagers, noisy equipment, and unanswered phones, the facility is not giving its inhabitants a pleasant place to live.
Low-quality food
Healthy and nourishing meals are one of the requirements that long-term care facilities have for the elderly residents living there, but they also have to meet certain dietary requirements.
Your family member may lose weight as a result of poor food quality if they refuse to consume the food that is offered to them.
High rates of employee turnover
Find out about the staff turnover rate when you visit a potential nursing home for the first time. Two significant things may be inferred from the response to this query.
To start, the turnover rate tells you whether your loved one will see the same people all day long.
Your loved one can get uneasy with new individuals arriving and departing. Low employee churn guarantees that they have time to get to know their aides and feel at ease.
A high rate of turnover might also be a sign of more subtle problems with the way the nursing home's administration is doing business. Furthermore, what can you anticipate if the home's employees aren't content?
One of the most evident indications of neglect is unhygienic living circumstances.
The rooms for residents should be in decent shape. In addition to having clean bed sheets and well-maintained bathrooms, residents should also be washed and appropriately attired.
Remember that mistreatment and disregard occur in even the most pristine and well-run establishments. For this reason, it's crucial to get recommendations before choosing the ideal house for your loved one.
Afternoon residents still in bed
It is not indicative of healthy social interaction when you visit an assisted living home in the afternoon and witness no residents in the common areas watching TV, conversing, or playing games. Residents are often left in bed in their rooms by carers, which increases the risk of unpleasant and severe pressure sores.
Refusal to Talk About Cost
Assisted living facilities that are not involved in financial exploitation or dubious financial dealings would be pleased to talk about the expenses and charges associated with placing a family member in a residence.
Honest Talk about Resident Care
Discussing patient-specific information regarding treatment and medical records with other healthcare providers and carers is forbidden under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). If you hear employees breaking HIPAA, there's a good chance they're also breaching residents' rights in other ways.
Conclusion
You may be able to file a lawsuit on behalf of an older person you love if you know or think they have been mistreated while residing in a nursing home or assisted living facility.
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