In the years since the worst of the COVID-19 pandemic, staffing shortages have plagued the healthcare industry. Too many educated, field-specific workers have either passed or transitioned to other, less-demanding roles. Economic and societal changes that often occur after a world-changing event have also caused employers to have difficulties with hiring and retaining the most qualified workers.
Disabled and elderly permanent nursing home residents must rely on caring and skilled administrative and office personnel, attendants, housekeepers, janitors, maintenance workers, nurses, doctors, and others to safeguard their lives. Yet, staffing shortages make these sites less safe, as seen with the recent reported increase in incidents of complaints, resignations, errors, thefts, abuses, injuries and deaths.
Residents and their loved ones may want to reach out to an experienced law firm like Thomas Law Offices if one or more of the following events adversely affected on-site safety:
Negligent Recruitment and New-Hire Processes
Nursing home owners, administrators, hiring managers and recruiters are often plagued by funding issues or, in the cases of separate property ownership, cost-cutting measures and mismanagement. As a result, they can’t always offer competitive salaries, which makes it more difficult for them to attract the best talent. Additionally, while desperate to fill positions, some of them perform negligent actions.
For example, these leaders might not choose to check for resume misrepresentation, lies of omission, criminal histories or prior complaints. They might fail to confirm an applicant’s education, including any medical or other certifications and licenses. They might also choose to hire unqualified applicants who seem like dependable, hard workers based on referrals but who have never worked in a nursing home or similar setting. Some hiring decision-makers don’t even check or ask for references.
If a history of problematic behavior exists, they might choose to believe the job seeker’s claims of improvement rather than err on the side of caution and hire a different person. They might disregard histories of minor infractions and offer on-the-job corrective measures and probation because the nursing home is in a region where most workers have some sort of background issue. Problematic workers often overwhelm talent pools in cities that experience high crime levels and small rural towns with high poverty levels, low incomes and limited educational opportunities.
Critical Mistakes by Overwhelmed Staff Members
No matter the hiring process and outcome, any worker in a nursing home setting experiences severe stress. They must attend to the needs of patients who have complex health issues. With a staffing shortage, many nursing home leaders are forced to increase individual worker hours above recommended health and safety levels. They might also increase the number of patients handled by each attendant, nurse or doctor.
Stressed staff members become overwhelmed when they must work more than 40 hours a week or deal with more than a handful of patients at a time, which can cause critical mistakes. For example, nurses and on-staff or visiting doctors might try to perform an entire floor of exams too quickly in a back-to-back queue. Any overworked medical staff might hand out the wrong medication or ignore or miss symptoms. If they have too many residents per worker, they might accidentally allow a patient to fall or fail to reach a fallen patient in a timely fashion. Higher infection rates might also occur because overworked housekeepers and janitors fail to clean or sterilize areas enough.
Minimal or No Emotional Investment by Staff
Lastly, hiring processes and working conditions often result in the employment of workers who lack enough empathy or sympathy, even when emotional intelligence is a necessary skill for resident health and safety in nursing homes. Some workers only care about performing the bare minimum of their jobs to earn a paycheck and refuse to build relationships with people who require more from them or who might die from serious health conditions.
Many predators also seek caregiving jobs because they perceive those who have physical weaknesses as easy prey. These workers have a negative emotional investment in which they receive pleasure from harming nursing home residents. In a high-turnover setting, a new attendant, nurse, or doctor who’s unfamiliar with a resident’s background might not believe them when they complain about abuse. Instead, the new staff member might believe the abuser, a preexisting staff member, who states that the resident is an attention seeker or suffering from delusions.
How a Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer Helps
Nursing home leaders often use staffing shortages to justify unlawful actions. Problems typically occur because of inadequate local, state, and federal financial support and oversight. Off-site and on-site leaders rarely feel motivated to hire the best or invest in regular inspections and close monitoring of workers.
Legal counsel can advocate for one or more residents, help with relocation to a safer site, or pursue compensation for personal injuries or death. They can also handle all court claim steps to help a victim sue for punitive damages and force property owners to act responsibly, even during staffing shortages.
