Nursing Home Negligence Claims

Nursing Home Negligence Claims

Residents of a care home are as deserving of an adequate standard of care as any other patient in the healthcare system. Their physical vulnerability can make the results of nursing home negligence traumatic not only for the victim but for their family and loved ones who may have supported their move into the nursing home expecting it to be a safe and caring environment. If you suffer an injury in a nursing home due to negligence, speak with one of the solicitors at The Medical Negligence Experts.

What is Nursing Home Negligence?

The most simple explanation is that nursing home negligence occurs when care providers fail in their duty to their patients. The legal definition, however, is more complicated. To make a successful compensation claim for care home negligence you need to:

• prove that you have been subject to an unacceptable standard of care;
• that you suffer physical or psychological damage as a result of it.

Case Study

A medical negligence case study that demonstrates this involves an elderly woman. Yet in a care home who suffers brain damage, and subsequently dies, after falling. The care home argued her age and frailty meant she would have fallen regardless.

However, lawyers successfully claim that the care home had been negligent by inadequately assessing her risk of falling. They base it on:

• her previous medical history and;
• that they did not provide reasonable assistance, mobility aids, and monitoring to prevent this.

Lawyers were also able to demonstrate that standard practice in other nursing homes would have taken these precautions. Moreover, that the nursing home in question was, therefore, negligent for not doing so.

Other examples of nursing home negligence include:

• Pressure sores caused by the inadequate care of immobile patients.
• Inadequate care of pressure sore infection, causing sepsis.
• Poor handling when moving a patient, causing fractures.
• Dispensing incorrect medication.
• Inadequate equipment such as walking frames and wheelchairs, leading to falls and fractures.
• Insufficient assessment of a patient’s risk of falling.

Care home negligence can occur in privately funded facilities as well as those run by the NHS. Accordingly, The Medical Negligence Experts handle compensation claims against both.

How Can We Help?

The team at The Medical Negligence Experts have experience in dealing with all types of medical negligence claims, including nursing home claims. If you are unsure whether your claim is valid we are happy to investigate the circumstances surrounding yours, or your loved ones, injury to see whether there are grounds for compensation.

We never lose sight of the person at the centre of every claim. No one deserves to be treated poorly, especially not when they are ill or infirm and unable to care for themselves. Proving negligence requires us to show that your care provider made avoidable errors due to oversight and that your injury resulted directly from their mistake. Gathering the necessary evidence can take several months so we always recommend clients contact us as early as possible for us to achieve the best possible outcome in the shortest amount of time.

Contact The Medical Negligence Experts today and ask how we can help you.