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It's one in the morning; you get a call from the nursing home. You're being told by a nurse
that your father or mother just suffered a horrendous fall and is on his or her way to
the local hospital. Hello. My name is Bill Campbell. I'm an attorney here at Elk & Elk.
I appreciate you joining me here today. What can you do if your mother or father suffered
some type of horrific injury due to neglect at a nursing home? Well there's several things
that you can do. First of all, you need to be an advocate for your parent. You need to
get involved. You need to be their voice because often times they can't speak up for themselves.
So what can you do? You need to make sure that the staff is aware that you're looking
over their shoulder. You need to get to know the DON (the Director of Nursing), the administrator,
the nursing staff, the LPNs, the STNAs. You need to know their names. You need to ask
questions. You have to question them about the care they're providing. And every nursing
home -- at least once a month -- should have a care conference meeting that pools all the
disciplines together: physical therapy, dietary, social services, nursing and the family. You
need to attend those care conference meetings and you have to ask questions. You have to
bring your concerns to the attention of the staff. And they should address those concerns
so the problem doesn't persist. If the staff is not addressing these concerns, you can
contact the Ombudsman Program. It's a state entity that will come in and perform an investigation.
And if, in fact, the nursing home is neglecting your loved one they will cite the nursing
home and require them to address that concern. And lastly, if your loved one suffered a significant
injury or even death, you should contact me. Because what's going to happen is the nursing
home staff is taught through their risk management not to tell the family anything, to shut them
out. So you're going to be left with many questions. You're going to be left confused.
And quite frankly, you're probably going to be left feeling somewhat guilty and that's
where we step in. What civil litigation does -- even though the end result may be monetary
award for the client -- the primary thing that we do is get some answers for the family;
make sure that they know what happened, how it happened and how can be prevented again.
We will get you the answers that the nursing home won't give you when your loved one suffered
a significant injury. If you're dealing with this type of problem, give us a call. We deal
with this type of problem on a daily basis. Again, my name is Bill Campbell and I thank
you for your time here today.