Most people think of nursing homes as a place where the elderly and infirm spend their final days and weeks. It’s a concept not without merit or accuracy. For many, however, a nursing home is supposed to be a place or rehabilitation.
When young people experience an injury, they usually convalesce at home under the care of their parents. For the elderly who do not have caretakers available, nursing homes are the only option.
When patients in hospitals are released to nursing homes, the expectation is that their nursing home stay will be brief. For these residents, the nursing homes bear the ultimate responsibility for their return to their normal life.
A resident at the Sunset Rehabilitation and Health Care nursing home in Canton, Illinois, was being transferred using a mechanical lift when she fell. The fall resulted in extensive damage to the woman’s knee including a laceration that required 26 staples to close. The resident was only supposed to be a temporary resident. Now her stay could be much, much longer.
Mechanical lifts are complicated pieces of equipment that require appropriate skill and training. Some lifts, called standing lefts, assist the resident by pulling him or her to her feet. Other types of lifts support the resident’s entire body. One example of a whole body mechanical lift is the Hoyer Lift. The Hoyer lift utilizes slings to support the body’s weight.
Anyone who has worked or lived in a nursing home knows that transferring residents is a critical task. Those seconds, when a resident is completely dependent on another, is the time when many nursing home falls take place.
Nursing homes need to provide comprehensive training to all nursing home staff in the use of all equipment, but especially for an apparatus like the Hoyer Lift. In this case, the two staff members who were assisting in the transfer failed to properly place the slings used to support the resident.
At the Law Offices of Barry Doyle, our Chicago nursing home lawyers have the experience to handle all aspects of your Chicago nursing home lawsuit. If you have a loved one in a Chicago nursing home who has been injured during a Hoyer Lift transfer, contact my law offices for a free and confidential evaluation of your case.
Other blog posts on unsafe transfers:
Failure to use mechanical lift results in ankle fracture
Care plan violation at Tower Hill Healthcare in South Elgin