Working in a nursing home is very hard work and often does not pay very well.  This leads to difficulty in recruiting and training the best possible staff members for many facilities.  Many of the truly talented and caring candidates with nursing home experience want to be compensated fairly for their efforts.  Sometimes the only candidates that will accept below-market pay are those who have no experience and little or no training.  This can create situations where nursing home residents can be abused or neglected.  Neglect can occur due to a lack of staff members to monitor and care for patients.  When a heavy workload is divided among only a few staff members, many tasks can go unfinished.  This can include managing the pain of the nursing home residents.  Pain assessment may be reduced or done away with altogether and requests for pain medication may go unanswered because there are not enough staff members to distribute the drugs and take notes on the patients’ reactions.  Abuse can occur due to a lack of staff members because this lack of resources means there are more opportunities for abuse to occur.  In a nursing home with a full staff, there are more checks and balances in place.  There are also many staff members available to watch patients.  In a facility with a staffing shortage, there aren’t as many checks and balances in place.  The staff members who are employed there may not notice possible abuse because they are busy with a heavy workload.  If you feel a lack of staff members is allowing abuse to occur, contact a San Bernardino nursing home abuse attorney for more information on preventing and stopping abuse.

Posted by Michael Young at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Inadequate staffing in nursing homes is a rather common occurrence because the turnover rate for nursing home employees is so high.  Because working with nursing home residents involves a lot of heavy lifting and other hard work, many people can’t handle the stress and the physical strain.  They leave their nursing home jobs for positions in hospitals or other medical facilities where they can work with younger patients who need less total care.  This creates a problem for nursing home administrators because they still need to fill each position within their facilities.  This often leads to hiring unqualified or inexperienced people to do jobs which should really be done by people with the professional skills necessary to do the jobs right.  Having an inadequate number of staff members means there aren’t enough people to check and balance each other, leaving room for abuse and neglect to occur without notice.  Not all nursing home employees who are abusive or neglectful start out that way.  They are not bad people; they simply get overwhelmed by the heavy workloads they’re handling and take actions they wouldn’t take if they weren’t so stressed out.  Neglect happens when residents aren’t cared for properly.  When staffing levels are inadequate, employees may cut corners to meet deadlines and try to do everything that is on their schedules.  When this happens, the care of residents isn’t as good as it should be.  Residents may not get the opportunity to exercise because staff members are performing other duties.  Instead of spending time with residents and doing activities with them, staff members may leave residents in bed all day or sit them in wheelchairs in the hallway.  Neglecting the medical needs of residents may also happen when a home is really inadequately staffed.  This can lead to dehydration, malnutrition, and serious injuries if the residents are not properly supervised.  If your loved one has been neglected due to inadequate staffing, contact a Los Angeles nursing home abuse attorney for help in taking action against the nursing home.

Posted by Michael Young at 8:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

When it comes to hiring employees, it is the responsibility of nursing home administrators to check their backgrounds and work histories at other facilities to make sure the nursing home community is as safe as possible for residents.  Unfortunately, many nursing home administrators are bogged down with paperwork and are trying to hire someone as fast as possible to fill an open position.  Checks may not be done or, if they are done, they may not be as thorough as possible.  Administrators often fail to call personal references to check their authenticity and this leads to many employees getting away with giving false references.  An applicant may have a friend give them a good reference or they may pay someone to act as a former supervisor and give the nursing home administrator that person’s phone number.  Nursing home professionals with a negative past to hide can be very creative in making up work histories and creating professional references.  This doesn’t excuse nursing home administrators from the responsibility they must take if a new employee is abusive or does not have the education or training needed to care for residents properly.  Anyone with a loved one in a nursing home needs to do everything possible to make sure employment applicants are put through rigorous screening processes including personal interviews, on the job training, orientation programs, and a probationary period where they are supervised while they carry out their duties.  If any of these checks and balances show that the new employee is not fit to work in the nursing home, he or she should be fired regardless of the staffing needs of the home at that time.  It may be hard to work without an employee, but it would be much harder to recover from the serious injury or death of a resident due to the inexperience or lack of knowledge of someone who had a negative work history or falsified credentials.  If you feel your loved one has been the victim of abuse and you want the nursing home to take responsibility, contact a Los Angeles nursing home abuse lawyer to find out what you can do to take action.

Posted by Michael Young at 8:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Most nursing homes have call lights or other signals for residents to use when they need help.  If you are visiting a nursing home, pay attention to when these lights go on and how long they stay on before someone responds.  If you see a light come on and immediately see an employee speaking with the resident over the intercom or going to the resident’s room to see what is needed, this may be a good sign that the employees are responsive to the needs of residents.  If you see a call light go on and it stays on for a long time without being answered, this may be a sign that the employees are not as responsive to the needs of the residents as they should be.  This can help you determine if the facility is a good fit for your loved one or if it should be avoided.  In a good nursing home facility, residents are supervised by the employees.  This may come in the form of organized activities for the residents or it may be in the form of specific employees being assigned to supervise a group of residents.  If you see that the residents of a facility are in the company of staff members at all times, this is a good sign.  It means that these employees are concerned with the safety of residents and do not want them to get injured as a result of being unsupervised.  If you see residents wandering the halls alone or sitting in wheelchairs with no one around, this is a warning sign.  The facility may not have enough employees or it may have too many residents, meaning that residents cannot be adequately supervised.  If your loved one is already in a nursing home and has suffered from neglect or been injured due to a lack of supervision, report your claim to an Orange County nursing home abuse attorney to find out what steps you need to take to remedy the situation.