Protecting nursing home residents from assaults by other residents October 8, 2009

The attorney general for the state of Illinois recently proposed strategies for protecting nursing home residents from assaults by other nursing home residents with criminal histories. The Attorney General was motivated by a series of newspaper articles describing assaults, rapes and murder by mentally ill criminals who also lived in the nursing homes. The Attorney General proposed better state inspections of the nursing homes, involvement of the state police in criminal history checks, and a central database to collect information about crimes in nursing homes.

This all raises the question of how safe your family member is in a nursing home in Florida. Most of the headlines about assaults on nursing home residents involved nursing home staff abusing a resident. However, assaults on residents by other residents may be much more frequent.

Florida has a law that requires nursing homes to conduct criminal history background checks on its personnel. However there is no requirement that the nursing home conduct criminal history background checks on its residents.

Of course, residents may be dangerous even if they have not been convicted of some crime in the past.  For example, people might become violent because of dementia, Alzheimer’s disease or hallucinations even if they have lived long lives without any violent tendencies.

Nursing homes have a duty to take reasonable steps to protect its residents from the assaults of other residents. This should include a reasonable investigation into the behavior of a resident before coming to the nursing home.  Nursing homes should review previous medical records, talk to the family and complete a thorough assessment of a resident to determine if there is a risk of violence. Of course, it is also important that the nursing home carefully observe the behavior of all its residents while at the nursing home to determine if the resident could become violent.

If a resident poses a threat to others, the nursing home staff should either take reasonable steps to keep the resident from hurting anyone or transfer the resident to a facility that has the expertise to adequately control the resident.

If one of your family members is in a nursing home we recommend that you talk to the administrator to get a full explanation about what the nursing home does to protect its residents from assaults by other residents. For much more information about protecting your family member in a nursing home, see our videos and articles at zqlawyers.com.