What to Do When Nursing Home Residents Attack Each Other

Monday, December 23, 2013

What to Do When Nursing Home Residents Attack Each Other

Written by Malman Law, reviewed by Steve J. Malman.

Families placing their loved ones in a nursing home are more

often worried about staff abusing them than other residents, but staff negligence may actually result in abuse among residents. Nursing facilities are expected to consistently keep residents safe from both employee abuse and an unsafe living environment, but aggressive residents are the direct culprits of abuse in many cases.

Elder abuse attorneys

represent victims of nursing home mistreatment at nursing facilities, whether caregivers or other residents are the ones partaking in the behavior.

Protecting Nursing Home Resident Rights

When nursing home residents experience abuse at the hands of other residents, nursing facilities, their employers and their parent companies may be held liable for injuries sustained. Abusive residents indicate that there is a severe lack of supervision that requires immediate attention.

Resident rights include the freedom from any physical, mental and emotional distress while staying at a facility, and staff members should separate unusually aggressive residents from others if they are dangerous. Dangerous residents should receive the same level of care as the others as well, and possess the same rights. Elder abuse lawyers are there to protect all residents from mistreatment, both dangerous and nonthreatening.

Threatening residents are often not even aware that they are endangering others, suffering from Alzheimer’s, dementia or other mental
illnesses that require treatment. Uncooperative residents may require restraint as well, but unnecessary restraint that causes additional physical or emotional distress is a form of abuse and may even encourage violent behavior.

Choose the Right Defense

Nursing home residents and their families shouldn’t have to worry about other residents harming them. An elder abuse attorney will help anyone harmed by other residents to recover compensation from the nursing facilities, employees or parent companies responsible. Building a nursing home abuse case will not only help prevent residents who have been attacked from being hurt again, but will also help dangerous residents receive the attention and treatment they need, further preventing future attacks.