When a person in New Mexico is in a nursing home, they are dependent on the people who care for them to do so promptly and thoroughly. When nursing home professionals neglect this duty and overlook even what seems like a small need or a minor chore, they can cause serious harm to their patients and the families who have entrusted their loved one’s care to a nursing home.
For example, take the case of bedsores, also called pressure sores. These wounds are serious medical conditions. Not only are they painful, but they also can get infected, even to the point of causing septic shock in rare cases. Infections in turn cause more pain and can also cause permanent medical problems. They can hasten the death of a nursing home resident.
The sad thing is that bedsores are easy to prevent. They are often caused when someone who cannot easily move on his own stays immobile for too long. We don’t think about it while healthy and fully mobile, but our staying in one position all the time puts pressure on certain points of the skin, ultimately causing pressure sores. Not getting proper food and water can also contribute to bedsores.
In other words, nursing home staff can take huge steps in preventing bedsores simply by making sure their residents get moved from time to time if they cannot do that for themselves. They also need to monitor their residents’ nutrition and hydration and make necessary adjustments. To a large extent, this is simply humane treatment, the sort that decent New Mexico residents would give to their aging loved ones.
Sadly, for a lot of reasons, some malicious and some less so, nursing homes often overlook these simple tasks. When this sort of nursing home neglect happens, and bedsores cause a problem for a nursing home resident, the resident and his or her family may have legal options.