Life can get hectic as you get older, have children and a full time job. It can become even more busy once you realize that your parents or elderly loved ones are no longer capable of looking after themselves without assistance. As a personal injury lawyer like one from Brooklyn Injury Lawyer can explain, it’s for this reason that we have nursing homes and assisted living facilities.
These facilities take the load off of everyday people who are busy with the many tasks one performs to maintain a quality standard of living for themselves and others by assigning staff to assist the elderly who have been put in their charge with what they need to do and by looking after them.
We place our money and our trust in these facilities that they’ll do right by us and our elderly loved ones, which is why it’s always a devastating discovery when we uncover evidence of nursing home abuse and neglect. There are many forms of abuse and neglect, but one of the most common telltale forms are pressure ulcers; otherwise known as bed sores.
Bed sores can come in many forms, but all are indicative of neglect on the part of the facility. It can start out as a small sore with basic redness and pain. Then it can break the skin and form a blister. From there it will overtake the layer under the top layer of the skin initiating the total degradation of the skin and tissues around the area and in extreme cases, exposing the muscle or bone.
As aforementioned, bedsores are very indicative of neglect as bed sores are caused by poor circulation, lack of decent hygiene, moisture buildup, and overall immobility of the individual. Basically, the combining causes imply that the person wasn’t tended to and not assisted with maintaining basic hygiene. Instead the patient was left to lie alone in one place for a significant period of time.
Care facilities can be held liable for bed sores in that the causes of them imply a breach of a duty of care, not just in terms of virtue, but in contractual terms which was likely signed in writing when the elderly patient was put in charge of the facility. There are of course the “damages” to the patient’s body that one suffers as well.
Also, more often than not, if a elderly individual at an assisted living facility has bed sores, there will usually be other forms of negligence to be discovered and more claims to be made to seek compensation for nursing home abuse and neglect.