Sedatives are drugs that are used to have a calming effect on nursing home residents and anyone who will be undergoing specific procedures.  You may be given a sedative before a dental procedure or prior to undergoing a minor surgical procedure.  Nursing home residents may be given sedatives prior to medical procedures or if they have become upset to the point where staff members cannot calm them down.  Sedatives do have their proper place in nursing home care.  They can really come in handy when residents are so upset that they become a harm to themselves or others in the facility.  Sedatives can also be used prior to medical procedures that may induce panic or cause pain for residents.  The problem is when sedatives are overused and residents are in a medicated state all of the time.  Instead of taking care of the residents and their needs, neglectful staff members may use sedatives as a way of keeping residents quiet and calm.  Sedatives can also cause sleepiness so the residents may sleep away their days, reducing the amount of time staff members need to spend talking with them and caring for them.  This is where sedative use becomes excessive in nursing homes.  When the sedatives stop being used for a calming effect prior to procedures or after panic attacks and start being used to control residents so that their care doesn’t become too difficult, that is when using sedatives becomes abusive.  If you find that a loved one has been sedated unnecessarily, contact a Los Angeles nursing home abuse lawyer to get help with your case.

Posted by Michael Young at 6:21 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Sedative overuse can occur for several reasons, some of which are intended and some of which are not.  Having a staff shortage in a nursing home and the lack of a good record keeping system can cause sedatives to be administered more than necessary.  Because records of administration are not being kept, one staff member may administer a sedative and another may administer the same sedative a short time later because the first dose was not recorded properly.  The same holds true for untrained staff members.  These inexperienced caregivers can administer too much of a drug without intending to or they can even give an unneeded dose if supervision and record keeping are not up to par. Sedative overuse can also be done intentionally by nursing home abusers.  These abusers want to gain control of patients for some reason or another, so they may administer too much of a sedative or may administer the sedative too frequently.  Sexual abusers may do this to make their victims more compliant and less able to remember what is happening.  Those abusers who want to commit theft from the residents may overuse sedatives to keep the patients from remembering what happened or seeing the theft take place.  Still other abusers use sedatives too much simply because they can make the patients sleepy.  This can cut down on requests for food, beverages, pain medication, and other needs that take up the time of staff members.  If you feel that sedatives are being overused on your loved one, contact a California nursing home abuse lawyer to find out how you can stop this abuse.