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Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect

Nursing Home Abuse and Neglect: Bed Sores or Pressure Ulcers

The terms "bedsore", "pressure ulcer" and "decubitus ulcer" mean the same thing and are used to describe any skin lesion or wound caused by unrelieved pressure that damages the underlying tissue. Left untreated, these injuries can become infected and result in the amputation of a limb, or even death.

These wounds are graded on a scale from I to IV, with a grade I ulcer being a minor reddening of the skin and grade IV being an open wound with exposed muscle or bone.

Pressure

The term "pressure ulcer" is a fitting one because they occur most often where there's pressure between a bony prominence and another surface, most commonly a bed or chair.

Common areas for the development of pressure ulcers:

The tailbone or sacrum
The buttocks
The hips
The heels

They can also occur elsewhere on the body.

Contributing Causes

There are a number of factors that commonly lead to the development of bed sores, including:

Failure to regularly re-position the resident, leaving one area of the body bearing the pressure of the resident's weight for long periods.
Failure to provide adequate toileting and clothing changes for residents who are incontinent of bowel or bladder.
Failure to provide adequate nutrition and fluids; if there is malnutrition and dehydration the skin will be less able to resist injury.

Bedsore prevention

Because these very painful wounds are largely preventable, the failure to prevent them may form the basis of a viable lawsuit against a nursing home.

Not only are they preventable, they are also treatable, and the progression from stage I or II to stage III or IV can be stopped. A proper treatment regimen would include:

Regular dressing changes
Application of wound treatments
Use of nutritional supplements
Use of a pressure-reducing devices

State and federal regulations provide that when a resident enters a nursing home without bedsores, they must not develop them unless they are clinically unavoidable.

This means that the nursing home and its staff must take all necessary steps to prevent the development of bedsores. In order to do this, they must make a proper assessment of the resident's risk of developing bedsores, develop an adequate care plan to prevent the bedsores, and then actually carry out the care plan.A full assessment of the treatment plan and its implementation is an important part of assessing the liability of the nursing home for the resident's injuries.

When proper treatment is not initiated, bedsores frequently do progress and become infected. This can lead to the steady decline of the nursing home resident's health, often culminating in the resident's wrongful death.

We assist families who believe their loved one's pressure ulcers are a result of nursing home negligence. Bedsores are often preventable and if you think negligence has caused them in your family member, don't delay in consulting an experienced nursing home abuse and neglect lawyer.