Related Links: Understaffing Can Lead to Overdosing & Florida Nursing Home Abuse |
Most elderly people living in nursing homes take about 10 prescriptions or more every day. While this is a lot for nursing home workers to manage, they are professionals who should be able to provide safe care without making mistakes with patients’ medications. Unfortunately, medication errors in nursing homes continue to be a frequent issue. In fact, 43 percent of Florida nursing homes were cited for drug errors, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.
Poor training, high staff turnover, and understaffing in nursing homes could be causing medication errors for elderly residents living at these facilities. Sadly, many nursing homes are guilty of giving their patients too much medication, not enough medicine, or the wrong prescriptions—usually someone else’s medication. When this happens, there could be serious outcomes such as:
- Hospitalization
- Amputation
- Death
When medication errors occur in nursing homes, residents can suffer dangerously high blood pressure, low blood sugar, strokes, heart attacks, and other injuries. Sadly, when medication isn’t dispensed properly, or if it is ignored altogether, a resident’s health condition might get worse. For example, if a patient isn’t being given his medication, his cancer could spread.
When nursing homes fail to give residents their proper medications or overdose patients, serious harm can occur. If you believe you suffered as a result of a drug error in a nursing home, or if a loved one died as a result of a medication overdosing or another type of drug error, you need to learn about your rights. Make sure to get your hands on a free copy of our book, The Florida Nursing Home Abuse Handbook.