When you place your loved one into a nursing home, it’s with the understanding that they’re going to be taken care of. Unfortunately, that doesn’t always happen.
Sometimes, the staff isn’t as attentive as they should be. They may be neglectful, forgetting to give your loved one much needed medications. Failing to give medications on schedule may be a sign of abuse or neglect that you can use in a nursing home abuse case.
Did you know that taking a drug at a certain time of day may be critical to how it works? For example, some medications have a short time span in which they need to interact with the target organ. Others may cause side effects that could lead to accidents, like dizziness that leads to a fall. By taking the medication at night, the risk may be reduced.
Many medications also need to reach a particular level in the bloodstream before they’ll become effective. Missing doses or changing when those doses take place could alter the levels in the bloodstream. Doing that could render the medications ineffective or lead to side effects or complications, depending on the levels in the body.
Health care providers should be following the “five rights” when administering medications. Those include:
- Giving medications to the right patients
- Using the right drugs
- Delivering medications at the right time
- Using the right dosages
- Delivering medications through the correct route
If they cannot do these things, then someone could end up suffering from those medication errors. If your loved one is impacted because of missing medications, you may be able to pursue a claim against the nursing home.
