If you have recently put your elderly parent into a nursing home in Arizona, you may be concerned that they aren’t getting the right level of care they deserve. People you have only just met are going to be taking care of your elderly loved one, and you can’t know for sure if they are going to do the job correctly. Obviously, you love your family member and would ensure that you are providing the best level of care possible, but you may not have the time to provide them with the proper care yourself. This is why people put their family members into a nursing home in the first place.
If you suspect that your parent is being mistreated at the nursing home in any way, then you need to be aware of a few things first. There are a few common reasons that people bring medical malpractice cases to court, and there are some things you need to be doing to ensure that your case is going to be a solid one.
What Are Common Nursing Home Mistreatment Cases?
Some of the most common nursing home abuse medical malpractice cases involve neglect. There are times when the medical professional responsible for treating your parent neglect to do their job, which could result in many negative health repercussions for your loved one. The prime example of this is if your loved one develops bedsores. If your parent is required to stay in the bed all day long, then they need to be repositioned quite often. If the nurse responsible for looking after your parent neglects to do this, your loved one could develop bedsores.
Another example of neglect in the nursing home is if your parent develops an infection. If a medical professional is examining and properly caring for your loved one, there should be no reason they develop an infection. There are, however, some rare cases when infections can develop that are unreasonable for a nurse to detect, but it’s still a good idea to consult with a nursing home abuse lawyer in Arizona about your case just to see if it’s worth pursuing. Also, finding out that your parent slipped and fell in the nursing home is another reason to pursue a medical malpractice case. This is true if they developed severe bruising or broke a bone, not usually if they just had a slight tumble. A nursing home employee should be observing your loved one at all times and ensuring they are not doing anything dangerous by themselves. The fact that they had the opportunity to fall and hurt themselves proves that they weren’t being cared for properly.
Another common reason people take nursing home staff to court over medical malpractice is because their parent or loved one was unnecessarily restrained. There are times when elderly people, especially those suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s, will act out of character and become unstable at times. If a nurse ties them down or does something else that they shouldn’t be doing to restrain them, this can be cause for a medical malpractice case.
Although more uncommon, another reason people take legal action against a nursing home is because their loved one was sexually abused. These cases are much more rare, but they have been reported.
How to Ensure That You Win Your Nursing Home Abuse Medical Malpractice Case
The first thing you need to be doing is to communicate with your loved one who is living in the nursing home. If they are telling you that they are being mistreated, then you need to do some investigation on your own. You can also hire a lawyer to do some investigating for you. If your loved one is telling you that they are being mistreated or that they are not getting proper medical care, then a lawyer can dig deeper into the situation. A lawyer will be able to get records of the employees to find out their background history, if there have been any complaints against the nurses, or any other information like this. If a nurse has several complaints logged against them in the past, then there’s a good chance your loved one is telling the truth and that a case can be built upon this.
Also, be sure that you take pictures of any injuries your loved one has sustained. If they have developed bedsores from improper treatment, take pictures of them and save them so your lawyer can use them in court. If they have developed an infection that should have easily been caught, then take pictures of that as well. Even bruises from a tumble should be photographed because they can be used to help legal and medical professionals determine if an accident was unavoidable or if it was caused due to a nurse’s negligence.
What Happens in Most Nursing Home Abuse Cases?
Most of the time, the abuse in the nursing home is by one person only and they can be held responsible for their actions. They will likely lose their job and be required to compensate your loved one for the damages they caused. Or, the nursing home who employed the negligent nurse will be held responsible. In some rare cases, the entire nursing home can be shut down, but this is normally only if the abuse was widespread among all of the nurses and not just one in particular.
If your loved one has been complaining about mistreatment at a nursing home in Arizona, then be sure to get in touch with the legal professionals at Tobler Law. This law firm has plenty of experience when it comes to nursing home abuse cases, and you definitely want a lawyer who knows what they’re doing so your loved one has the best chance of winning in court.