By: Darrell Castle
One sign that your loved one is being abused in the nursing home is if they have to be taken to the emergency room.
If your loved one has been a victim of nursing home abuse, or you think he or she has, then you need to speak to an experienced attorney immediately. Call (901) 327-1212 to schedule your FREE case evaluation, or fill out one of the contact forms to have someone from our office contact you.
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Video Transcript
How do you know when your loved one is being abused in a nursing home? What are the signs? What do you look for?
Hi, I’m Darrell Castle and I’m an attorney licensed to practice law in the state of Tennessee and the answer to that question is – there are many answers to that question of course.
One of the things you might look for are the obvious bed sores, which are always a problem. They’re almost always a sign of neglect. They’re a sign of neglect when they’re very severe.
Bed sores can cause sepsis or even death on occasion.
Now, another thing to look for is when your loved one is taken to the emergency room by the nursing home – or sent to the emergency room.
People do get sick and they occasionally need emergency care and there’s certainly no neglect in that, but it is a common thing when something happens in a nursing home for them to react by sending the person to emergency care – to an emergency clinic or an emergency room.
A common thing like a fall might cause neglect. Someone will fall with a broken leg and stay in the nursing home before someone realizes “uh oh,” or with a broken hip and then they’ll send him to the emergency room. That’s something you might want to look at.
Other things to look for when you go and visit your relative – which I hope you do periodically – is simply signs of abuse. If your relative or loved one is talking about things that sound an awful lot like sexual abuse – unfortunately these things do happen – then you might want to pay attention to that. It might be more than a product of the mind damaged by age or dementia. It is a terrible thing and it does happen.
Signs of abuse like bruising and things of that nature. Neglect is something you can tell by the smell in your loved one’s room sometimes. All of those things need to be looked at and you need to pay attention to make sure the treatment of the loved one that you put in this nursing home is something they’re getting.
And when you do, just pay attention to make sure everything is okay. Most of this abuse is pretty obvious when you really look for it.