More than 1,800 people die each year in nursing home falls. All health care professionals in the nursing home setting must work together to help encourage nursing home safety.
Nursing homes are required to conduct a fall-risk assessment for every resident to determine who may be at risk for falls. The fall-risk assessment is particularly to preventing falls because it sets forth what accommodations should be in place for each resident.
Staff should always be on the lookout for residents who may require assistance getting about. If residents have a history of falls, the facility should consider using alarms on chairs or beds to notify the staff when the person attempts to walk on their own.
Causes of Nursing Home Falls
Some of the more common causes of nursing home falls include:
- Hazards in the nursing home – wet floors, poor lighting, improper be heights, improperly maintained wheelchairs, equipment left out of place
- Medications – Drugs that effect the central nervous system, such as sedatives and anti-anxiety drugs (psychoactive drugs)
- Improperly fitting shoes or incorrect walking aids
- Frequent use of restraints
- Facilities failing to provide assistance or provide specialized bathing equipment including chairs, stands and grips
- Transfer into and out of bed
- Failing to engage locks on wheelchairs
- Poorly maintained stairways and walkways
Nursing Homes Duty To Protect Patients From Falls
Although facilities like to claim that these incidents are isolated events, a dropped patient or patient with a repeated history of falls, is usually indicative of underlying problems in the nursing home including:
- Poorly trained staff: Some facilities do not properly train staff in how to use equipment
- Under-staffing: Facilities sometimes to not have enough man power to assist patients or to safely perform transfers as they were intended
- Utilizing the wrong equipment to move or transfer patients: facilities must have the proper equipment for the job
- Faulty equipment: facilities must keep equipment in proper repair. This includes getting replacement parts from the manufacturer and having them installed by a trained technician.
Nursing Home Liability For Falls
When evaluating nursing home fall cases, it is important to evaluate the circumstances surrounding the specific incident as was as the patient’s fall-related history at the facility. While not all fall-related injuries may be compensable– in many situations, there is a pattern of falls and a clear failure on the part of the staff to implement fall-precautions.
For this reason, it is important to review the patient’s complete chart from a facility to evaluate liability in nursing home fall cases. When liability is established, the facility may be responsible for the associated pain, decline in the quality of life and medical expenses related to treatment.
Related:
Even the best facilities occasionally provide bad treatment to their residents. A wrongful death lawsuit has been recently filed against Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital, a nationally recognized rehab center in Chicago on behalf of the family of a deceased resident. The family carefully selected Schwab as a rehabilitation center for their loved one’s physical therapy and rehab training following the amputation of a leg.
Unfortunately, even this well respected facility, failed to provide basic care for an elderly man’s needs. When the man was admitted to Schwab, the physicians ordered that the man be transferred in and out of his wheelchair with the use of a mechanical lift and two staff members. The day after his admission a CNA ignored the physicians’ orders and attempted to transfer the man into his wheelchair herself. In the process the man fell and fractured his hip and femur….
Falls are a common problem facing elderly people in and out of nursing homes. By some accounts, every elderly person in America will fall at least one time over the course of the next year. Many of these falls will cause injury and some will even cause death.
In the case of falls occurring in the nursing home setting, many clients and their families focus their attention on tying a specific number of falls to a facilities responsibility. Truth be told, there really is no magic number when it comes to identifying a specific number of falls after which a nursing home or hospital becomes responsible….
One resident died after rupturing a blood vessel in his brain and fracturing his neck following his wheelchair tipped–anti-tipping devices were not in place. A second resident fell forward in her wheelchair and struck her head on the floor resulting in a concussion and laceration requiring stitches– a prescribed waist restraint was not in place. The similar incidents occurred within 48 hours of each other at the same nursing home.
What makes these unnecessary events so disturbing is that they occurred within days of each other–these are not isolated incidents. The events have prompted inspections by state nursing home inspectors. Pennsylvania Health Department, director of nursing-care facilities Bill Bodner, sums the situation up well, “the crux of our concern is the fact that in each case, there was miscommunication between the physician and nursing staff, and no clear plan of how the staff should treat these patients.”…
From a liability perspective, nursing home fall cases prove to be far more difficult than they may appear to be at first glance.
While nursing home must assess each patient for their propensity to fall and implement fall preventions accordingly— for some patients falls may occur even with safeguards in place. We’ll save the discussion on nursing home fall precautions for another day– but what about how the facility handles the care post-fall?…
A nursing home negligence lawsuit has been filed against Stearns Nursing and Rehabilitation Center after a 95-year-old resident fell on multiple occasions and suffered hip fractures. The lawsuit alleges that the facility failed to implement fall precautions despite the fact the facility knew the resident suffered from Alzheimer’s, was generally confused and considered to be a ‘high fall risk’.
The lawsuit claims, Stearns suffered multiple falls resulting in injuries during her admission from May 25th through July 7, 2007. In particular, the lawsuit alleges the following specific incidents….
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About Jonathan Rosenfeld
Jonathan Rosenfeld is a lawyer who represents people injured in nursing homes and long-term care facilities. Jonathan has represented victims of nursing home abuse and neglect throughout Illinois and across the country. Jonathan’s reputation as an aggressive advocate for the…