When your elderly loved one can no longer care for themselves in their homes, or when you can no longer care for them in their home or your own home, you might collectively make the decision to place them in a nursing home for better care. While most facilities are dedicated to making older Texans feeling as comfortable and cared for as possible, others don’t have the same priorities.
Our Austin, TX nursing home abuse lawyer can help you and your loved one get compensation for the injuries and damages they receive at their facility. No matter how much research you’ve done before admitting your older family member into a home, their nursing home might abuse and neglect them. That’s why you need the help of Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm—we’ll defend their rights after mistreatment.
Different Types of Nursing Home Abuse
After suspecting your family member is being abused in their nursing home, you’re probably wondering what specific types of abuse and neglect could happen to warrant a claim against the facility. It’s important to know about the different types of abuse that can happen to your elderly loved one.
That way, you’re better able to identify what they’re going through and will be able know when you need to file a claim against the facility. Here are the different types of abuse that can take place in nursing homes and specific examples that can help you identify them:
- Physical. You likely know what physical abuse is—when someone roughly handles, hits, pushes, or physically restrains a resident in a nursing home. This can also extend to anything else that has to do with the body, meaning that chemical restraints or harmful administration of medication can be included in physical abuse as well.
- Mental. Mental abuse is more about the emotional and mental ways that a resident is mistreated in their facility. Yelling, berating, taunting, and purposefully confusing residents can have a serious effect on their mental health, which can lead to their physical health suffering even more.
- Neglect. This is a form of abuse that can be intentional or unintentional, but still is considered to be abuse either way. Neglect happens when staff don’t have enough time to provide ample care to each patient, or they purposefully don’t tend to a resident’s needs and calls. Not checking in on them when they call, not feeding them, avoiding giving medication, or neglecting to clean their rooms can be considered neglect.
- Financial. This type of abuse happens when someone else gets access to the resident’s finances or when they’re stolen from. If a caretaker convinces your loved one to give them access to their bank account, sign over their estate, or if valuables go missing from their room, then they could be experiencing financial abuse.
- Sexual. Unfortunately, sexual abuse can also happen in nursing homes. Unexplained STDs, bruising around their genitals, and becoming withdrawn can all be signs that your loved one is experiencing sexual abuse at the hand of someone in their facility.
No one should have to endure abuse of any kind, especially not while in a place that is supposed to provide them with adequate care. Our Austin, TX nursing home abuse attorney will help get your loved one the justice they deserve for what they’ve endured.
Responsible Parties for Abuse or Neglect
Once you suspect or correctly identify that your loved one is being abused in their long-term care facility, you might be wondering who could possibly be responsible for this abuse? At first, you might think it must be a nurse or other caretaker who is liable for the abuse or neglect, but actually, it might not be.
Here are some of the different parties who could abuse elderly residents in a nursing home:
- Nurses and other licensed medical staff
- Unlicensed aids
- Other staff members, like custodians and food service
- Nursing home administrators
- Third party employees visiting the facility
- Visitors
- Other residents
It can be hard to pin down exactly who was responsible for abusing your loved one in their nursing home, but with the help of our Austin, TX nursing home abuse lawyer, you’ll be able to ensure that they are held accountable for their actions so that your family member can get justice.
When you have one of our lawyers from Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm on your side, you can rest assured that we will fully investigate what happened. That way, we can determine who was at fault, the exact damages that they caused, and how much your loved one is owed in compensation.
Texas Statute of Limitations for Nursing Home Abuse Claims
Before filing a legal claim, one of the final things you’ll need to think about is whether or not you are within the statute of limitations for the claim you are looking to file. To ensure that you take action within the time limits, you should know that you have two years to file a nursing home abuse claim under Texas statute of limitations for personal injury.
What’s important to note, is that you don’t have two years from the date of the injury. Your two years will likely start when the injury from the abuse is discovered. This means that if you or your loved one doesn’t realize they’ve been harmed until months later, then you have two years from that date to file a claim, not two years from the date that they started being injured.
This can all be very complicated, which is why it’s essential to have an Austin, TX nursing home abuse attorney on your side. It can be difficult to figure out how much time you have to take legal action, or even if you’re still eligible. That’s why we can help. We’ll figure all of that out for you so that you can focus on getting your loved one the care they deserve.
Our Nursing Home Abuse Lawyers Are Ready to Fight
The older population can be more fragile than we think. Even if they are stronger than they look, we still need to protect them when they’re in their nursing homes. The people we trust to care for them can sometimes be the same people who harm them, which is why we need to be vigilant for abuse of any kind. Our Austin, TX nursing home abuse attorney is here to ensure that when you do notice abuse, you can take immediate action against the responsible party.
At Buckingham Barrera Vega Law Firm, we’re prepared to fight for your loved one’s rights so that they can get justice for the harm they’ve endured. You shouldn’t have to go through this on your own or in the dark. We will guide you and your loved one through the legal process. Reach out to us today for a free consultation.
