What Are The Risks Of Understaffing In Nursing Homes?

No one takes the decision to put an ailing parent or another relative in a nursing home lightly. If you decide to move your loved one into a nursing facility, you expect them to receive compassionate and competent care for the duration of their final months or years. However, problems with nursing home staff are known to happen, potentially leading to neglect or abuse. One of the issues you should know about is understaffing.

Increased Risk of Neglect

About 1.4 million people in the United States are taken care of in nursing homes, and staffing levels at these facilities are not always adequate to meet their needs. In the past five years, one in eight nursing homes has been cited for inadequate staffing levels.

When too few people are available to cover a shift, nursing home residents may not be able to get food, pain medicine, and help with basic hygiene needs when they need assistance. If your loved one resides in a facility with an understaffing issue, their quality of life may suffer drastically as they wait in hunger, pain, or filth because staff members are too busy to help them when they are vulnerable.

A nursing home abuse attorney may help you identify the signs of neglect to determine if you have enough evidence to bring a lawsuit against the nursing home. Being the subject of a lawsuit may motivate the nursing facility to amend its policies about staff numbers and improve the situation for all its residents.

Increased Risk of Hospitalization

When nursing home residents are neglected, serious medical complications can occur. Senior residents who don't have the help they need are more likely to suffer from:

• Bedsores
• Falls and the associated broken bones
• Malnutrition
• Complications from a lack of medication

These are completely preventable conditions that may require sending your loved one to the hospital. In addition to causing extra expenses in medical bills, these medical complications put your loved one through unnecessary pain and suffering. You may want to ask an attorney about pursuing compensation from the nursing home because of this negligence.

Available Staff Works Long Hours

When nursing homes are understaffed, the staff members who are available are more likely to work long shifts. This puts them at risk for being drowsy, irritable, and careless. A nurse or aide at the end of a lengthy shift could drop a senior resident, give them the wrong medication, or even intentionally hurt them out of frustration, potentially all resulting in serious injury. If your loved one has suffered because of this issue, you may want to hold the staff member responsible, as well as the nursing home that employed them.