Nursing home residents are frequently on medications and need assistance with handling dosages and consumption. The facility staff is expected to shoulder this responsibility and ensure the comfort and health of their charges. However, there are times when nursing home staff become careless with their patients’ medication regimens. This can prove devastating, resulting in behavioral modification, excessive pain, worsening of symptoms, or death.

Nursing home staff and the companies that operate them are legally obligated to provide an atmosphere that is physically and mentally safe. Unfortunately, the desire for monetary gain, poor management decisions, understaffing, inadequate training, or failure to oversee workers can lead to the neglect of their needs.

Our Philadelphia nursing home abuse lawyers at Kanter, Bernstein & Kardon, P.C. saw a need early on for checks and balances to provide proper care of people in Pennsylvania nursing homes. Two decades ago, when most firms turned away these cases, our firm began to prosecute them and since then have been on the cutting edge of holding nursing home companies accountable for the harm they cause.

Overmedication in Philadelphia Nursing Homes

Nursing home staff may get frustrated or impatient with the residents that they are caring for. Sadly, this often leads the staff to give their patents debilitating and sedating drugs. Overmedication is a serious problem leading to poor health and death in nursing homes throughout the U.S. At some unscrupulous facilities the residents are overmedicated so that they can operate with reduced numbers of staff. This is using chemicals to restrain a person.

Staff Medication Abuse

It is shockingly common for nursing home staff to steal pain medication from their patients to feed their own addictions. This appalling practice also means that nurses are often working while influenced by strong prescription drugs.

Medication Negligence

When medications are forgotten or issued too close together, the results can be serious. All nurses should be adequately trained in giving medication and be capable of monitoring the effects of these drugs closely.

Staff can harm their patients when they:

• Administer medications incorrectly
• Prepare medications improperly
• Fail to give medications with food or water as instructed
• Mix medications that should not be combined
• Crush or split medications erroneously
• Use expired medications or medications assigned to another patient

We Are Available 24/7 to Discuss Your Case

With over 20 years of experience, our Philadelphia nursing home abuse attorneys are familiar with fighting medication error cases.

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