The decision to place a loved one in a nursing home can be extremely difficult. However, often when people are weighing their options, a strong factor towards placing someone in a facility is safety. The curse about living until a ripe old age, is often at some point it becomes too risky to live at home alone. Nursing home facility are required to have policies and procedures in place to keep residents safe and secure. Nursing home facilities know that something as simple as a slip and fall, can be catastrophic for an elderly resident.
While serious slip and fall accidents may seem like rare occurrences, they are not for elderly adults. Older adults have frailer bones and are more likely to suffer a serious injury after a fall compared to younger adults. In fact, falls are the leading cause of fatal and non-fatal injuries for older adults. A fall for an elderly person can result in broken bones, hip fractures, and even death. While death from a slip fall seems like an extreme outcome, the fall is often not the actual cause of death, but what lead up to cause. For example, if a resident falls and brakes a leg, he or she will likely be placed bed rest. Too much time lying in bed can lead to bed sores, infection, appetite loss, and pneumonia.
Pneumonia? Yes, while a fall and pneumonia seem completely unrelated, it makes sense when you understand that one of the best methods for preventing pneumonia is exercise. Even simple exercises, like walking allow the lungs to fully expand. A bedridden resident is unlikely to get much if any exercise and may take an extended period of time to heal from a serious injury. Knowing this, it makes more it is easier to see how an elderly person who falls and breaks a hip could become bedridden and die from a disease like pneumonia. It estimated that as many as 1 in 4 elderly persons who experience a hip fracture will die within 6 months of the injury.
To prevent slip and fall accidents, nursing homes evaluate residents for their potential fall risk. Based on that assessment, the facility will put personalized steps in place to keep each resident safe. Measures that nursing home facilities can take include:
- Using personal alarms on residents;
- Installing grab bars in bathrooms, showers, and stairways;
- Removing tripping hazards such as carpeting, cords, and rugs from pathways where residents travel;
- Utilizing canes, walkers, and wheel chairs with lap buddies (a device which can be placed on the residents lap while seated in a wheel chair to prevent a person from falling out of the wheel chair if they tend to sit too far forward or serve as a reminder that they need assistance before getting out of the chair); and
- Having adequate supervision and monitoring. While this should be common sense, sadly too many facilities are understaffed.
If your loved one suffered a slip and fall accident while living at a nursing home facility, you will want to speak with our experienced Kansas City Personal Injury Attorneys right away. The nursing home could be liable for failing to prevent the fall from happening in the first place. Pursing personal injury cases or wrongful death claims not only recover damages for injured persons and their families, it also helps hold nursing homes accountable and help protect other resident from experiencing similar harm. The Personal Injury and Elder Abuse Attorneys at Hubbard & Kurtz, L.L.P. have helped countless injured nursing home victims around the area, both in Kansas and Missouri. To speak with an attorney about harm done to your loved one, contact our office at (816) 472-4673 to schedule a consultation. At Hubbard & Kurtz, L.L.P. we fight for justice.