What is abuse and neglect in nursing homes?
Stephen D. Phillips: He explains the difference: abuse is usually an intentional act, while neglect is carelessness or lack of attention, such as leaving a resident in bed long enough to develop pressure sores.
Attorney Stephen D. Phillips · Nursing Home Abuse · 1-minute 45-second answer
Transcript
Automatically transcribed from the video’s audio and lightly edited.
Nursing home, abuse and neglect, those terms are often used interchangeably. Typically, as lawyers, we tend to think of abuse as an intentional act. Somebody in the nursing home, an employee, for example, does an intentional act, such as punches somebody or assaults somebody. Whereas neglect or negligence is carelessness, it’s lack of attention. It’s leaving somebody in a bed long enough that they create pressure sores and ulcers. It’s not monitoring the medication appropriately so that nursing home patient, who is completely dependent upon the care providers, ends up with a significant injury or harm. Nursing homes are tasked with the responsibility of taking care of those most vulnerable. I’ve been handling nursing home cases and the firm has for its entire existence. The first nursing home case I was assigned was fresh out of law school 30 years ago. Phillips Law Offices is different than other firms who handle nursing home abuse and neglect cases because we have the medical background. We understand the medicine involved because what happens in these nursing home cases is that the nursing homes typically say, well, the injury wasn’t due to neglect. It was due to the underlying diminished or poor health of the resident. And it’s unfortunate, but stuff happens is the defense. Well, the Phillips Law Office is because we are knowledgeable and trained with regard to medicine and terms and we’ve got vast experience with regard to medical negligence, for example. We know the anatomy. We know that the common defenses in nursing home cases are cast aside aren’t looked at the way the defense would like the jurors to look at it.
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