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Nursing Home Abuse Your Injury, Our Fight

Santa Fe, NM Nursing Home Abuse Lawyer

Elders deserve to be treated with respect and care in their nursing homes just as much as they should be when they’re in their own home or living with family. After making the difficult decision to move your loved one to a long-term care facility, you expect their new home to keep them safe just like you would. Unfortunately, that’s not always how it goes.

When your loved one is experiencing subpar care that injures and endangers them, you could use the help of our Santa Fe, NM nursing home abuse lawyer. At Buckingham & Vega Law Firm, we’re prepared to fully investigate what happened to your elderly family member, how they were abused, what injuries they sustained, and what they’re owed in damages. You can trust us to protect their rights.

Have You Been Injured?

We Are Ready to Passionately Advocate For Your Rights
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Our Results Make a Difference

Explore How We Have Helped Our Clients
  • $73.21 Million Verdict Birth Injury

    The Buckingham & Vega legal team secured a $73.21 million verdict on behalf of a baby who was catastrophically injured due to the negligence of their doctor and medical team.

  • Record-Setting $72 Million Verdict Birth Injury

    The Buckingham & Vega team obtained a $72 Million verdict in a birth injury case when an OB/ GYN failed to properly monitor the mom during pregnancy.

  • $16 Million Truck Accident

    Buckingham & Vega obtained a $16 million settlement in a truck accident case. The truck driver was speeding and inattentive (texting) and crashed into the rear of a pickup truck stopped at a stoplight.

  • $14 Million Dram Shop Liability

    Our team obtained a $14 million dram shop verdict on behalf of a client who was injured due to negligence.

  • 13 Million Work Injury

    Buckingham & Vega represented an oilfield worker who was killed when their company failed to properly train its employees on how to safely move waste bins. Our client was killed when he became trapped between two bins.

  • 13 Million Truck Accident

    Our team secured a 13 million settlement in a truck accident case. An eighteen-wheeler made an unsafe turn in front of a car driven by a grandmother and her family. The grandmother was killed and the family suffered severe injuries.

New Mexico Nursing Home Resident Rights

Even though your older loved one has chosen to move into a long-term care facility where they’ll get around-the-clock care as they need, they still have rights as a human being that keep them from being completely controlled while at their facility. Through the Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987, nursing home residents in the United States have rights that must be upheld at their facility.

Here are some of the rights included in the act that you should know about when admitting your loved one into a nursing facility:

  • The right to be fully informed.
  • The right to make complaints.
  • The right to be an active participant in their own care.
  • The right to privacy in their care and in their rooms.
  • The right to dignity, respect, and freedom.
  • The right to visits as well as unmonitored visits.
  • The right to independence and making their own choices.
  • The right to transfers and having a safe transfer.

These rights can be comforting to know as a resident in a nursing home and as the family member of an elder in a facility. Even though they ensure by law that your elderly loved one will maintain their rights in their nursing home, that doesn’t mean that these rights will be upheld by the staff.

One of the ways that a long-term care facility might break these rights is by abusing your older family member. After being abused or neglected and experiencing an infringement of rights, you could use the help of our Santa Fe, NM nursing home abuse attorney. We’ll defend their rights and get them justice for what they’ve endured.

Signs of Nursing Home Abuse

If you’re considering filing a nursing home abuse claim, then you’ve likely seen signs that your loved one is experiencing abuse and neglect at the hands of the staff, residents, or other members of their long-term care facility. You might be unsure, though, if you’re definitely seeing signs of abuse or neglect. If you’ve never been through this before, you might not know what to look for even though it feels wrong.

That’s why it’s important to know the signs to look for—that way, you can correctly identify whether or not your loved one is experiencing abuse. Even if it turns out that your loved one isn’t being abused, it’s still helpful to know what to look for and be able to identify the signs that something isn’t right with your family member’s care.

Whether you think the abuse they’re enduring is physical, emotional, mental, financial, or sexual, many of the signs overlap. Being as vigilant as possible to changes is your best course of action. Here are some of the signs to be aware of that could indicate your loved one is being abused or neglected in their long-term care facility:

  • Unexplained bruises and broken bones
  • Bedsores
  • Poor hygiene
  • Soiled and unchanged sheets
  • Messy or uncleaned room
  • Missing medication
  • Unexplained weight loss
  • Dehydration and malnourishment
  • Unexplained STDs
  • Missing funds
  • Missing valuables from their room
  • Change in demeanor
  • Anxiety and depression
  • Refusing to speak to anyone

The signs above could be from abuse or neglect. Often, abuse is malicious and intentional, whereas neglect is unintentional. But both are equally as dangerous because they can lead to your loved one being seriously injured. As an older person, this can cause their health to rapidly decline.

When you recognize any of these signs and start to suspect your elderly loved one is being abused or neglected in their long-term care facility, our Santa Fe, NM nursing home abuse lawyer is here to stand up for them and get them justice for what has happened to them.

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