nursing home abuse attorney Orlando

Published on: December 9, 2016

Verbal Abuse in Nursing Homes Spurs Formal Citations

A state health department has cited seven nursing homes in connection with reports that residents were verbally abused by staffers. The state Department of Public Health in Connecticut cited the nursing homes more than $1,000 each in connection with the incidents.

In one case, a registered nurse overheard an aide swearing and being disrespectful to the patient. However, it was not reported at the time. The aide was later fired.

In a similar case out of that same state two years ago, six nursing homes were fined by regulators in connection with cases of verbal abuse in nursing homes. In one of those cases, a nursing aide who was assisting a resident in using the toilet swore at the resident, prompting the resident to grab the aide’s shirt and yell. The aide then allegedly pushed the resident down, causing the resident to strike his head on the toilet paper dispenser and land on the wheelchair. The incident wasn’t reported for three whole days. Continue reading →

Published on: November 3, 2016

Study: U.S. Elder Abuse is Under-Identified, Under-Reported

By Dean Freeman

Diagnoses of elder abuse in hospital emergency rooms is often unreported and not identified in hospital emergency rooms, according to a new study conducted by by a group of researchers from the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, the University of California San Diego and Weil Cornell Medicine.

Previous research has established that 1 in 10 older adults suffer some form of elder abuse. That’s going to mean tens of thousands more cases of elder abuse treated at hospital emergency rooms as the population continues to age. As it now stands, more than 23 million adults are treated in hospital emergency rooms every year.

Our nursing home abuse lawyers in Orlando strongly believe that this is a major misstep at a critical juncture for vulnerable patients. By the time patients are treated in the emergency room, the abuse has reached a turning point, and it becomes imperative that nurses, doctors and other health care professionals be trained about what nursing home abuse is – and how to recognize it. Continue reading →

Published on: January 29, 2016

Sexual Abuse at Nursing Home Costs Operator License

By Dean Freeman

It’s something that is difficult to talk about and sometimes not always easy to identify.

Sexual abuse in nursing homes can take several forms. It can be the aide who takes inappropriate pictures of a patient while bathing. It could also be another patient.

In cases where both victim and aggressor suffer from conditions like dementia, there could be a tendency by staff to brush off the known sexual encounters as two people seeking affection. But we have to be very careful not to make assumptions in these cases because one of the first questions should be: Can a person with limited mental function give consent? Often, the answer is no.

A troubling case out of Washington state shows what can happen when nursing home staff are too quick to dismiss these interactions as consensual. According to news reports, numerous instances of sexual contact between a male dementia patient and several female patients was deemed consensual by the director of nursing, who chose not to report the interactions to either the state or the families. Continue reading →