The Top 5 Most Common Complaints in Nursing Homes

Nursing homes can be great places for your older loved ones to receive expert care that is catered to their needs. Even though you do your research and try your best to get them into a facility that treats them perfectly and won’t leave them any room for complaints, that’s not always the case. Sometimes facilities don’t match your family member’s needs and they have complaints, or worse, they abuse or neglect your loved ones.

When your family member experiences neglect or abuse in their nursing home, they deserve to have justice. You can get help from a nursing home abuse lawyer to ensure their rights are protected. Other than abuse, let’s take a look at some of the common complaints that residents in long-term care facilities might have.

Nursing Home Complaints

While long-term care facilities typically try their best to cater to their residents and ensure they’re happy, they can’t make everyone happy all the time. Of course, there’s a difference between complaining about minor things that can easily be fixed and filing a complaint about abuse or neglect that your elderly loved one is experiencing.

Here, we’re talking about complaints residents might have about things that inconvenience them, not about being mistreated in a way that infringes on their rights. Here are five of the most common complaints of residents in nursing homes:

• Staffing Problems. Unfortunately, many long-term care facilities have problems with their staffing. When a care home is understaffed, or their workers are undertrained and overworked, this can lead to them making mistakes and not providing the best care for the residents. From there, residents are bound to complain that they’re not getting the attention that they need from the staff.
• Slow Call Response. On top of staffing problems, patients in a nursing home could have complaints that staff don’t respond to their calls quickly enough. Residents deserve prompt care, and while staff likely aren’t taking too long on purpose, their delays could end up harming the patient if they need something immediately.
• Poor Food Quality. The quality of life for residents should be on par with if they were able to live alone in their own home. This means that they should still have full and satisfying meals that they enjoy. Many residents complain that the food in their facilities is not up to par and isn’t what they would want most of the time.
• Not Enough Social Interaction. Even though facilities have many residents, they don’t always give their patients enough opportunities to have social interaction. Being around other people and interacting is a large part of your elderly loved one staying mentally sharp and healthy. When they don’t get enough social interaction in their facility, they can suffer even more.
• Sleep Disturbances. Since nursing homes have around the clock care, sometimes this can cause sleep disturbances for residents. If they need to be woken up for treatment, they might not be happy about that even though it’s necessary. Other residents could also be loud neighbors, and they could cause problems sleeping.

All of these complaints can be fixed by the facility to ensure that their patients are as happy as possible with the care that they’re receiving and the environment that they live in. By listening to complaints and taking notes for how they can change, nursing homes can adapt their facilities to better fit their lifestyle.

However, there is a difference between a resident complaining about something mild that can be changed to improve their experience and making a complaint about abuse that they’ve experienced in their facility. As their loved one, you should be able to decipher between the severity of their complaint and whether or not this needs legal action. Regardless, a complaint should be taken to management first so that they can handle it and make the necessary changes first.

Our Lawyers Will Defend Your Elderly Loved One

Your elderly family member who is in a nursing home could have complaints about how it’s run or the care that they’re receiving. That might not warrant a lawsuit, but if they’re being abused or neglected in their facility, then they deserve to get justice for what they’re enduring. That’s where Corban Gunn, Attorney at Law comes in to help.

If your loved one is suffering from abuse in their Mississippi long-term care facility, you could use the help of our Biloxi nursing home abuse lawyer. We’re here to investigate what happened to them, who was liable, and what they’re owed in compensation. Reach out to our office today so that we can get started working for you.