Assisted Living Abuse
Amit Raju
It has been found that assisted living abuse has spoiled the names of many nursing homes in the US. It is culpable under the laws of various states whether the abuse takes place in St. Louis, Tampa Bay, Orlando, Cleveland, Ohio, or any other US state. The abuse is of several different types and includes the following.
Physical Abuse - This is said to occur when a nursing home staff member uses physical force to ensure compliance by a patient. It is a patient's right to remain free from physical restraint while he/she stays in a nursing home. Restraint can mean physically tying up a patient to the bed to establish control over him/her. Using improper and illegal restraints on patients comes under the definition. Sedating a patient with an overdose is a form of chemical restraint and is also physical abuse.
Sexual abuse - A sexual act by a nursing home staff member with a non-consenting patient comes under the definition of sexual abuse. Even a sexual act with a patient who does not have the capability of refusing consent and offering resistance against sexual advances is sexual abuse.
Emotional abuse - This occurs when verbal communication or non-verbal signals are used by a staff member to torment a patient in a nursing home. Emotional anguish/distress may be caused to a patient when a staff member does not deliver on promises made by him/her. Such a promise may be made in respect of change of bed sheets or support to sit up or assistance with toilet routine.
Neglect - This is abuse by omission. When a patient in a nursing home is not administered the requisite services in time, it results in breach of nursing services and comes under neglect. Neglect can include failure to provide hygiene, skin care, and nutrition. Inadvertent neglect is not as culpable as willful and deliberate neglect. A patient and his/her family pays for nursing services so breach of that through neglect is punishable under elder abuse laws.
Abandonment - A nursing home can never leave a patient admitted in it to fend on his own for himself/herself. After all, he/she has been admitted in the home for precisely help in nursing services for which the nursing home is monetarily recompensed. Desertion of a patient by nursing home staff is tantamount to abuse of the rights of the patient.
Financial abuse - A patient's family pays a nursing home owner for the services to be rendered by the staff there. Misuse of the payment by not providing requisite nursing services to the patient causes breach of the right of the patient to nursing services.
Keeping mum about the violation of a patient's right to nursing care can never prevent abuse in nursing homes. Rather than silent forbearance, taking immediate rightful action against assisted living abuse in nursing homes is very much recommended. Patients' families can do this by retaining firms of elder abuse attorneys.
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