Unfortunately, the nursing home experiences many unspeakable cases of abuse that go unheard. Even when a resident complains, the nursing home fails to respond, or they take days or weeks to respond. You can feel your heartbreaking knowing that someone you love experienced abuse at the hands of an authority who had a responsibility to protect them.
A Responsibility to Bring Them to Justice
You have a responsibility to bring those responsible to justice. Not speaking out can lead the perpetrators to do it again and again to others. When you take legal action against them, then they will pay attention. Unfortunately, there have been cases where a senior citizen at the nursing home had to wait up to three weeks before the police even responded to the allegations of abuse. In any other part of society, the response is immediate, which makes the lack of a timely response unacceptable.
Growing Number of Nursing Homes
Experts estimate that 1.4 million adults currently live in nursing homes across the United States, and another 40 percent will be entered into a nursing home sooner or later. This shows a real need to take care of the elderly. While many get well taken care of, you have others who suffer at the hands of their caretakers. The senior citizens who have suffered abuse have a 300 percent higher likelihood of dying within the next three years.
Abuse in the nursing home can involve a variety of things, but here are some of the things to watch out for:
- Financial exploitation
- Psychological abuse
- Sexual abuse
- Physical abuse
- Neglect
- Resident-to-resident abuse
Any one of these cases could and should be grounds for filing a personal injury lawsuit. Bringing those responsible to justice ensures that it doesn’t happen again.
Here at Tobler Law, we serve the Phoenix, Gilbert, Mesa, Chandler and Tempe communities. We love helping our clients to get the justice that they deserve. When a nursing home acts neglectfully towards patients, they deserve to have legal action taken against them. If it were your father or mother who suffered this abuse, could you stand idly by and watch it happen? Most people couldn’t bear to watch something like this happen. You should always be cautious if the caregivers don’t want you to be left alone with them, or your loved one has unexplained weight loss or bruising or broken bones. These are signs that it might be time to look into the situation more carefully and call a medical malpractice lawyer in Phoenix if needed.