Abuse In Nursing Home Essay

With the elderly population growing every year, and there being no signs of it slowing down, the subject of nursing homes should gain the interest of many Americans. In the history of nursing homes, abuse has been happening since nursing homes have originated. The statistics from 1970 show that majority of people in nursing homes were being abuse or neglected in some type of way. Back then there was no regulation on who worked at nursing homes; anyone who wanted a job as a certified nurses aide could just walk in and apply without any previous knowledge on how to take care of people with complex needs. The government added a restriction with the hopes to reduce the abuse, and passes a law in which you had to have one hundred hours of training, …show more content…
About 90% of residents who are abuses are scared to report the incident so, therefore, the crime goes unpunished. Also, the abuser many be the elderly person’s only source of companionship which is another reason as to why they may be hesitant to report abuse (Krug, Dahlberg and Mercy). Another study concluded that only about 1 instance of elderly abuse out of 14 are actually reported and proper discipline happens; to people that believe this position they find that if they can fix this and get it to where more people report it, there will be more people who will be held accountable for their actions and therefore lower the abuse allegations. The people in this stance believe that to recognize abuse or neglect happening you first must be educated to know what abuse or neglect actually is. They believe that if we start to educate more of the people caring for these elderly and informing the elderly one what to do if they are abused there will be a drop in abuse allegations because people will start to become educated and know that they are victims of abuse or neglect, and they will know exactly how to report it and then the correct discipline can be