Unfortunately, just about any day’s newspaper reveals yet another story about nursing home residents being harmed by their “caregivers,” people hired by the nursing home.
According to a November 14th report by the Star-Telegram, a nursing home employee who was video-taped mistreating a woman with Alzheimer’s disease was sentenced to five years probation in Fort Worth, Texas. The employee was accused of pinching the leg and pulling the hair of an 84-year-old resident who was under her care at the time of the offense. Relatives of the resident noticed that she was behaving oddly when they visited the nursing home and hid a camera, smaller than a preschooler’s crayon, in their mother’s room.
A week earlier, McKnight’s and other reported on extremely disturbing incident involving an LPN at a 120-bed nursing home in Pennsylvania who shot and killed a resident and then turned the gun on herself. The shooting took place at about 5:30 p.m. while the nurse was working a shift. The weapon was a semiautomatic gun. The nurse apparently shot the resident in the chest and then shot herself in the head.
All too often when nursing home employees do harm, their supervisors weren’t doing their jobs. The warning signs leading up to the harm were ignored by those were supposed to be paying attention.
The Kosieradzki • Smith Law Firm represents clients in cases involving catastrophic injury caused by nursing homes and other care facilities that fail to provide proper care. If you believe your loved one has been harmed due neglect or abuse in a nursing home, take action and contact the Kosieradzki • Smith Law Firm online or call us toll-free at (877) 552-2873 to set up a no-cost, no-obligation consultation.
