Two certified nurses aides at the Central Baptist Village didn’t want to get the seat of the total mechanical lift wet when they transferred an elderly resident into her shower chair, so they didn’t use the lift. The result was a fractured femur bone and a night spent in excruciating pain for the Central Baptist Village resident.
When many people hear the term “nursing home fall” they often have a very specific idea of what constitutes a nursing home fall. They think of a resident falling while walking with a cane or a walker, or slipping in the shower. These falls happen, and they happen often.
But, there’s another kind of fall that frequently takes place in nursing homes, and it’s just as dangerous. It’s the botched transfer, and it happens when nursing home residents are being helped to move from their bed to their wheelchair, or to the shower chair, or to a walker, or to any of the various other places where nursing home residents rest.
As a nursing home fall lawyer, I’ve become familiar with many of the excuses that nursing home staff give when a resident is injured during a transfer, but a desire to “not get the total mechanical lift pad wet” must be the saddest I’ve ever heard.
The resident injured at Central Baptist Village was supposed to have two CNAs present and a full mechanical lift for all transfers. A mechanical lift is a device that’s used to offer partial or full support for a resident during a transfer. There are several different types of mechanical lift. The Hoyer Lift uses cloth slings as a means to fully support the entire body weight of the resident.
The nurses’ notes for the following day indicate that the resident was “calling out the whole night,” but no action was taken until the following morning when the woman’s physician was informed of the situation and an X-ray was ordered.
By failing to follow the policy for transferring the woman, the CNAs on duty committed nursing home neglect. It seems beyond belief that a member of the Central Baptist Village staff would risk the well being of a nursing home resident in their care just to avoid having to dry the seat of a piece of machinery, but that appears to be what happened.
If you have a loved one who has been severely injured in an Illinois nursing home, contact our Chicago Illinois nursing home lawyers for a free and confidential evaluation of your case. Many kinds of nursing home injuries can’t be easily categorized, but that does not mean that the injuries were not the result of nursing home neglect.
Other blog posts of interest:
Violation of care plan at Tower Hill Healthcare