Christopher Burk:
Hey. I’d like to welcome you back to part three of our five-part series regarding nursing home negligence, nursing home abuse. This part number three is gonna be about what family members can do. What should you be looking for?
As I said before, many of us have friends or family that are in nursing homes, assisted living facilities. First and foremost, what should you be looking for when you come into the room to see your loved one is, one of the biggest risks that you have in nursing homes a lot of times is fall risks, right? Generally, people that are older that are in nursing homes may have difficulty getting around, may have difficulty walking, ambulating. They may have need the assistance of a crutch cane, something, whatever it is. Oftentimes those items are not located in the room.
Also, one other issue is a safe path to get around in the room, for instance, a safe path to the bathroom, from their bed to the bathroom. Look and see, do they have a clear path, right? Are there unnecessary obstacles in the way, right? Like a chair, a small table, something that you could easily move, right? Secondly, keep track when you’re in there of the staff that’s coming in each day, right? How long are the staff coming in to visit?
Now it’s one thing if they’re giving you and respecting your privacy, we all understand that. But if you go there and there’s like four or five, six hours, and nobody is coming to see you with while you’re visiting your loved one, that’s a bit of a cause for concern, right?
Also look at, you know, how they are when they’re treating the patient, your loved one while you’re there, right? You would expect them to be on best behavior. But if you notice that they’re agitated or something is wrong or there’s…you can just tell there’s some conflict between your loved one and the staff, you should probably take a note of that because if it’s that way when you’re there, think about it when you’re gone.
Also just take a look at their bedding, their sheets, how clean, how hygienic is it? I mean those are simple things you can take notes of. Pull out your phone, take a photo of something in the room you find questionable. Last but not least, quality of food, right? Simple as that. How is the quality of the food they’re getting? How does it look? How are the plates? How are the trays? Little things like that add up over time and they’ll give you a clue to bigger problems going on. So that’s part three of our discussion. I look forward to seeing you guys for part four really soon. Have a great day. All right.
