The people who live in nursing homes are often relatively vulnerable. They may struggle with physical limitations that prevent them from meeting their own needs. They could also potentially have mental health issues like dementia that make them particularly vulnerable to abuse and neglect.
Ideally, the people working in nursing homes should be trustworthy and diligent individuals who make the comfort and safety of residents their top priorities. The residents depend on timely and compassionate support for their daily needs. All it takes is one bad hiring decision to completely shift the standard of care and quality of life at a nursing home facility. One malicious individual could torment multiple residents. A professional struggling with burnout might cut corners and ignore requests from residents in need of support. Addicts might steal medication or resources from vulnerable residents.
How do unreliable, and even dangerous, people manage to obtain jobs at nursing homes?
Understaffing leads to poor hiring choices
For multiple consecutive years, there has been a dangerous shortage of nursing home professionals. Facilities have a hard time hiring new professionals and retaining the people they have on staff. The combination of high levels of demand on the workers and low pay makes it very difficult to recruit and retain nursing home employees.
Those handling the hiring at a nursing home may rush through the background check process and could easily miss warning signs such as a history of terminations or a prior criminal record. The result of those oversights could be a dangerous individual with direct access to vulnerable people in a facility where they should be safe. Workers with questionable backgrounds and minimal oversight can steal from residents, physically abuse them and neglect their care needs.
In scenarios where the neglect or abuse of an older adult directly connects to the conduct of a single employee, it may be possible to take legal action against the nursing home. Failing to properly screen employees can be as negligent as overlooking complaints about the conduct of individual workers.
Nursing home neglect and abuse can lead to harm for the most vulnerable people in society. Families that take legal action can potentially force companies to change their practices while simultaneously pursuing compensation for the harm that their loved one has endured.
