Nursing Homes, and Broken Neck Injuries, Causes and Solutions
Quick Answer: What causes most neck injuries in nursing homes? Slips and falls are the leading causes of broken necks in nursing home residents.
Poor supervision and inadequate nursing care can lead to more nursing home falls with uncoordinated older folks: tripping, falling hazards, cognitive health, and physical health problems, including osteoporosis.
What Should Clients Expect From Our Slip and Fall Lawyer?
Ultimate Guide to Compensation for Slips and Falls
Poor mental and physical health can increase the probability that a nursing home resident will slip, trip, fall, and suffer a broken bone or fractured skull. Even people in wheelchairs can slip and fall downstairs or into an elevator bank or stairwell and die. The solution is better supervision to avoid abuse or neglect leading to nursing home falls and keep residents safe.
Broken Necks in Nursing Homes Explained
About Elder Abuse and Neglect
Before we cover broken necks, our legal team will discuss keeping elderly residents safe 101. After, we will discuss the causes and effects and your legal options. Let’s go!
Elder abuse is going to end anytime soon. We often think of bedsores caused not by the failure of a nurse to do their job. Besides direct nursing home neglect, there are many other ways an elder can be injured or killed indirectly.
After all, even a minor fall can be catastrophic to an elderly person. A broken bone can be a death sentence, depending on an older adult’s risk factors. But there are multiple ways to be hurt or killed by the nurse simply looking the other way. We, lawyers, call this non-feasance.
Sometimes fatal, non-feasance in nursing care means the employees and nurses ignore your loved ones. Here, an understaffed facility typically fails to supervise, see, or pay enough attention to their walking or wheelchair mobility. This makes the California nursing care facility negligent towards its elderly residents.
This will lead to incidents and reports of nursing home abuse among the residents. Such incidents have left many people and victims at the nursing centers suffering from broken neck injuries. Nursing home negligence is just one of many ways an elderly patient can be a victim of abuse or neglect, so let’s look at nursing home facility negligence and broken neck injuries.
Elderly People Suffer from Nursing Home Abuse and Negligence
It is due to the negligence of the staff or their lack of supervision when taking care of the old-aged patients. If you have an elderly or older patient in your family who is a victim of abuse at a nursing home or has suffered a neck fracture, you can have Ehline Law Firm help you.
Minor Injuries Go a Long Way for Nursing Home Residents
Broken neck injuries, cervical fractures, or spinal cord injuries are not the only assisted living facility injuries. Even the minor injuries that elderly individuals or elderly patients suffer can turn out to be highly lethal. Dementia and other similar conditions are common illnesses among nursing home residents. Every nursing home resident must remain alert and try to avoid falls.
However, they also have a right to rely on the nursing home staff, even if they look solely to assistive devices for adequate care. Older adults have a high risk of falling. As a result, these people can break their necks and not just suffer cervical fractures, etc. This is called nursing home abuse.
Severity and Occurrences of Broken Neck Incidents at Nursing Homes
Even when using assistive devices, trip hazards can result in serious injuries, including a broken neck. Such people may suffer different kinds of uncomfortable and painful fractures and damage. It can be spinal column damage, spinal cord injuries, cervical spine fractures, broken bones, or other injuries.
The severity of falls and fractures
The severity of the fracture or the broken bones depends on how bad the fall was in the first place. It could be a cervical fracture, which is one of the most common types of fall injuries. Some falls require more than a single doctor visit. Some falls require a surgeon to perform emergency surgery and long-term hospital care. One thing that has to be considered with nursing home neglect resulting in a broken neck is whether the elderly people who fell down had already suffered a fall in the adult situation is much worse if they also suffered a fall in the past. Such an accident at any number of nursing home facilities can be a life-altering incident in the life of an elderly resident and their surviving family member. Older adults are also more prone to infection after surgery as well.
Annual Death Rate from falls
A study shows that after suffering from a neck injury in old age, 57% of total elderly people end up losing their lives annually. Therefore, older adults and other residents falling at nursing homes and breaking their necks is not something that can be taken lightly. It often leads to permanent damage, including constant infections and addictive pain medications, and partial recovery. The danger of calling on the floor can also harm the victim’s personal dignity, leading to depression and suicide. This group lawsuit for wrongful death and serious injuries.
Falls of Elderly Patients are Preventable
It is very much possible to prevent elderly residents at nursing centers from falling and suffering from broken bones, broken neck injuries, or other injuries.
Elders Falling is a Common Occurrence at Nursing Homes
Shockingly, elderly people falling into nursing homes has become common. Tolder adultsson behind the falls is the nursing homes’ mistreatment, neglect, or abuse.
If you or someone you know has or is currently suffering from pain after falling and suffering from a fracture, the particular nursing home for seniors can be held liable.
Get an Attorney to Help You
However, if you wish to do it, you must work on the attorney-client relationship. You can make it happen through a competent and dependable lawyer to do the job. It would be best if you had a lawyer because the nursing home, its staff, or its handlers will try to blame you or the victim’s poor health or old age. Our top legal team understands your difficult situation and wants to help you get money and increase your physical range of movement so you’re not confined to a wheelchair and crutches.
Multiple Kinds of Neck Injuries
As per the study, the upper cervical area is the most common location on nursing home residents’ bodies where they get fractures, plus the neck.
At nursing facilities, broken neck injuries are divided into three sub-injuries that are as follows:
Cervical Extension
This fracture type is mainly among older adults who already cannot move due to adult conditions. It is perilous for such older adults to make forward motions or steps without help, which can cause a fall injury. For elders with medical conditions like advanced osteoporosis, immobilization is often permanent.
They can’t even move around without direction, control, or assistance from a trained physical therapy nurse, doctor, or other qualified staff members. You can contact us today for a free case evaluation more about receiving financial support for a pressure sore, improper nutrition,
Central Cord Syndrome
People may get this type of spinal cord disorder when hyperextension occurs in the neck.
Odontoid Fractures
If a person falls and takes a direct hit to the head, it can cause an Odontoid.
The Effects on Nursing Home Patients Following Broken Neck Injuries
If it is a case of a young person going through a broken neck, it is not as alarming as an elderly person getting the same at a nursing home.
An older older adult suffers from a fracture at a nursing home, which can cause multiple health problems. The health problems can sometimes be chronic, affecting the rest of their lives. sometimes
You must bear in mind that fractures not only have the potential to cause physical health issues in the nursing home resident but also impact them emotionally and mentally.
Short-resident-sects
They do not last long and can be fixed with proper rehabilitation and treatment. Some of the significant short-term effects include respiratory problems or cardiovascular complications.
Due to a broken neck, doctors perform the necessary checks to test the ventilation, oxygenation, and airway passage to the heart and lungs. If these checks are performed correctly, they can prevent the situation from aggravating further.
As a result of the broken neck or fracture, there are high chances of patients suffering from a neurological shock and hypotension.
Listed below are some of the problems faced by elderly patients at nursing homes.
- Issues with Bowel: elderly patients face Problems
- Muscle Atrophy.
Long-Term Effects
Neck injuries and cervical spine fractures have long-term effects as they are pretty severe among old-aged patients.
The long-term effects found in nursing home residents after a broken neck include:
- Gastrointestinal Problems.
- Bladder Dysfunction
- Pressure Ulcers
- Autonomic Dysreflexia.
The elderly patients who suffer from neck fractures are monitored to see if their bladder and bowels are functioning properly. Regular blood pressure checks are also carried out as part of the safety process to ensure the patient’s well-being.
Checking blood pressure is important because high blood pressure can cause massive distress in elderly patients.
Negligence by Nursing Centers
Sadly, such injuries and fractures are common among old people in nursing centers due to abuse. Apart from abuse, older adult centers sometimes are not built in favor of elderly people. Then, there is the staff at the nursing center. Older adults gain proper training, and because of their lack of exercise and care, they may have injuries.
Some of the acts of negleolder nursing staff include:
- Poor Maintenance
- Over-Medication
- Lack of Supervision
- No Proper Safety Measures for Elderly People
- Staff with a Lack of Training
The Nursing Homes Can be Held Liable for Abuse
If the staff at the nursing home is irresponsible and their carelessness results in elderly patients’ death or chronic conditions, then they are more than liable.
When such issues occur, the families of the victims can file lawsuits against the nursing centers and the responsible staff members. The families can do this to acquire compensation for the suffering, pain, medical expenses, and many other issues.
If the elderly person dies due to a neck fracture at the nursing home, older adult family members can file a lawsuit against the nursing centers as a wrongful death lawsuit.
The lawsuits can be filed to get compensation for the following damages:
- Medical Bills
- Funeral Costs
- Burial Costs
- Loss of Services.
In conclusion, these injuries are preventable with proper nursing care. Yet, traumatic injuries, including spinal cord injury with its complications, remain the leading cause of unexpected deaths among the elderly. Personal injury complications can hinder breathing, leading to respiratory heart issues (high blood pressure) and gastrointestinal and muscle atrophy problems. Some victims already suffer from diabetes and other complications. Hence, bainjuryure diabetes has an acute mortality rate above 20% in older people.
Contact Ehline Law Firm Nursing Abuse Broken Neck Lawyers
Are you or a loved one undergoing extreme pain and suffering after a broken neck injury in a nursing home? The CDC provides study data and insights. We provide bold, aggressive, and honest legal help and attention to injury victims within that data set and who live in nursing care facilities. And those in nursing care facilities within that data set with your first free consultation to discuss your legal rights. Whether taking action against nursing home neglect or a personal injury claim, the Ehline Law Firm lawyers can finally help you get justice and the rightful compensation.
Regarding young individuals, minor injuries are not a thing to be worried about. Even the slightest minor falls can result in major injuries like hip fractures compared to young people. Scsignificante your free consultation today. Call us at (213) 596-9642 or use our website contact form to rule out medical malpractice and retain a top nursing home abuse lawyer in Los Angeles County, CA. Let’s talk about winning your nursing home broken neck case. Act now before the statute of limitations.