South Carolina Nursing Home Abuse Injury Lawyers Fight for Victims of Abuse and Neglect

Assisted living facility residents are susceptible to a wide variety of painful and even life threatening injuries, including: 

• Nursing home bed sores. Bedsores, also known as pressure ulcers, occur when a patient is not moved enough. Elderly residents often cannot turn over or shift positions without help from nursing staff. If staff does not move the patient, he or she can suffer these sores. Bedsores can cause damage to the bones, muscles, and joints. Some untreated bedsores can even be fatal. Complications from bedsores can include sepsis, infections, cellulitis, and even cancer. Nursing homes should be on the constant lookout for bedsores.
• Slips and falls. Many elder patients have problems with mobility. This can be due to balance issues - legs, hips, and feet that do not work properly - and other causes. For this reason, nursing home staff should secure the patient to make sure he or she does not fall. Nursing homes need to provide for bedrails and other safety factors. Walkers and wheelchairs should be used when necessary. Slips and falls can cause broken bones, nerve damage, and other serious complications.
• Malnutrition and dehydration. Many facilities do not let residents feed themselves and often have strict timelines for eating and drinking. Common injuries from a lack of proper nourishment can include muscle weakness, brittle or malformed nails, dry skin, chronic diarrhea, anemia, and joint point. Dehydration can result in dry skin, constipation, a failure to sweat, headaches, fever, heart problems, and changes in blood pressure. Lack of food and drink can also cause cognitive and emotional problems. In extreme cases, a resident can die because of malnutrition.
• Unexpected deaths. All of these problems - bed sores, falls, malnutrition, dehydration - along with other problems such as bleeding can cause a patient to die if they are not treated in a timely and correct manner. When the nursing home fails to protect the resident, a South Carolina nursing home abuse and neglect injury attorney reports the misconduct to the South Carolina Department of Health and Environmental Control to start an investigation. We can also sue the nursing facility and others responsible on behalf of the family for wrongful death.