Senior Citizen with Alzheimer’s Abused by Nursing Home Worker

This case involves the assault of a senior citizen by a nursing home worker. The plaintiff, a seventy-three-year-old female, suffered from Alzheimer’s. The plaintiff had to be monitored twenty-four hours a day, as she frequently wandered around the facility. The nursing home records indicated that on numerous occasions, the plaintiff wandered into other patients’ rooms. On the night in question, the plaintiff was not supervised and wandered into a restricted area. An employee found the patient and grabbed her to lead her back to her room. The plaintiff remained confused, but the nursing home worker continued to ignore the patient, leading her back to the room. The worker then threw the plaintiff into her room, causing her to fall and sustain a bruised hip and laceration on her left hand. Additionally, the plaintiff sustained a bruised arm because of the tightness of the worker’s grip.

Question(s) For Expert Witness

1. Should the nursing home have had additional measures to ensure that the plaintiff was not able to wander throughout the facility?

Expert Witness Response

In most cases, nursing homes should individualize aspects of their care in order to ensure that each resident is adequately cared for. While each facility has staffing and financial constraints, there is a basic standard of care that each facility should have for the different residents. In this case, the fact that the resident had Alzheimer's meant that the facility should have put measures in place that ensured that the plaintiff could have been supervised and prevented from wandering in the facility. Furthermore, with the plaintiff having prior incidents, the facility should have been aware of the plaintiff's propensity for wandering the facility and taken measures to prevent this.