Elder Law

Nine Nurses Indicted For Nursing Home Abuse

By Levin & Perconti

WCAX News reported today on troubling news out of a Vermont nursing home, the Northwoods Rehabilitation Center. A mammoth 175-count indictment was recently issued naming nine nurses at the facility. The charges involve many instances of improperly caring for the residents in their charge as well as for falsifying records to cover up their shoddy care.

The specific acts of negligence are varied and include, for example, failing to turn an immobile 53-year-old resident or to properly position the vulnerable patient. This common form of negligence often leads to deadly bed sores, which are ulcers that bore deeply into patient bodies. In addition, the nurses are charged with failing to administer medications properly and timely and failure to change wet garments. It is clear from the records that all of these nurses simply treated their residents in a sub-human manner, denying them even the most basic dignities.

To hide their poor care, the nurses also attempted to change some nursing home business records which implicated their lacking care.

Our Chicago nursing home attorneys at Levin & Perconti are saddened, but not shocked, by news of widespread nursing neglect at an elder care facility. As we have often reported, a culture of improper care and abusive service often permeates an entire facility. When that happens, many employees begin slipping below the standard of care to which they law requires. In that way, nursing home abuse can be much more than bad acts by a single problematic employee and instead balloon into facility-wide problems with many staff members playing a role.

Each day that these abuses go unreported more elderly victims suffer. Please contact a nursing home lawyer today if you suspect any bad acts at a facility near you.

Full post as published by Illinois Nursing Home Abuse Blog on September 15, 2010 (boomark / email).