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Nursing homes and assisted living facilities owe a duty of care to their residents and are obligated under the law to act with care and compassion. When nursing home staff breaches this duty, and as a result, your loved one is gravely injured or is killed, then you may have a claim against the nursing home and any other liable party, including individual staff.
Although it can be a difficult think about when you are grieving the loss of a loved one, but consider speaking with a lawyer if you suspect that the nursing home committed neglect or abuse. A lawyer acts like a police investigator, reviewing medical records, speaking with witnesses, obtaining governmental records, and other items, to piece together exactly what happened to your loved one.
The purpose of the lawyer’s investigation is to discovery whether (1) the nursing home committed abuse or neglect and (2) whether the nursing home’s actions actually caused your loved one’s injury or death. In some cases, this is a relatively easy process. For example, when there is video evidence of a charge nurse being physically abusive towards a resident.
However, in most cases, the negligence or abuse is harder to identify. For example, attributing dehydration to the nursing staff may require extensive review of medical records and charts, but then to link the dehydration to renal failure, and renal failure to the resident’s death may take two or three independent physicians to verify.
As mentioned, whether you have a claim against the nursing home will require that both of these elements be present. In other words, the nursing home can be negligent in various ways, but unless their action is directly related, as in the cause, of the injury or death, the nursing home will not be liable.
If your loved one has been injured or passed away at a nursing home or assisted living facility, and you are wondering whether you have a claim, then please, feel free to call and speak to one of our experienced Georgia nursing home abuse lawyers today. Our consultations are always free.
