Elder Medical Neglect Happens More Than Anyone Would Like to Acknowledge

I was recently reading an article by Rose Hunt entitled Elder Medical Neglect Happens in Hospital and it made me sad to think how ours elders whom we were taught to respect are being treated in their golden years. There is nothing golden about a bed sore or skin tear. This is an all to common problem when the elderly are left to rely on caregivers to meet their daily needs. Don’t think just because they are in a hospital or nursing home they are receiving the proper care they require. I have seen numerous patients come out of a hospital in worse shape then when they went in. The elderly patients come out with bedsores that could kill them if they are not treated right. Most of the time family members do not have the appropriate training to care for such a wound. 

The sad truth is these bed sores could have been prevented by simply turning the patient on a regular basis. In hospitals this often gets overlooked because the nurses and nursing aides are to busy. Some times they will mark on the chart that the person was turned even if they were not due to lack of time or the patient sleeping. So if this happens a few times a week that patient is going to be the one to suffer with sores. I was the caregiver for an elderly lady who had a stroke and while in the hospital she fell three times due to a lack of supervision. She also developed a 5-inch bedsore. They workers in the hospital didn’t want to bother turning her because they were afraid they would wake her up and have to talk to her or sit with her. Elder abuse doesn’t just happen in medical facilities; several times I have seen abuse in the home. Some times the abuse is not intentional.