 Wandering and elopement are included in the list of the top nursing home complaints in Arizona and throughout the country.
When a nursing home resident who is cognitively impaired elopes or wanders and is injured in the process, the nursing home facility may be involved in negligence with regards to nursing home staff. If your loved one has suffered serious injury, wrongful death, elopement, or wandering while at an Arizona Nursing home facility, contact attorney James Morgan for a free Arizona nursing home neglect consultation. As an experienced Arizona nursing home abuse attorney, he will thoroughly investigate your case to determine if there is a pattern of insufficient staffing, unsafe practices or substandard care within the facility.
Wandering refers to instances when a cognitively-impaired resident moves aimlessly inside a nursing home facility with no regard for personal safety. The resident can possibly enter into dangerous areas, such as stairwells and other unsafe areas. Wandering may also occur when the unsupervised resident enters into the rooms of other residents without invitation.
On the other hand, elopers are generally purposeful wanderers with overt and often repeated attempts to leave the care-giving facility, unsupervised. Frequently, these residents have a perceived "need" to attend to something (e.g., to go to a job that they haven’t had in years).
When wandering and elopement incidents occur, a nursing home facility may be deemed negligent if:
· The facility is not sufficiently staffed
· The staff was not properly trained to supervise residents susceptible to wandering
· The facility holds a history of failing to meet minimum staffing requirements
· The facility failed to install and properly maintain alarms or other devices to prevent wandering and/or elopement
· The facility did not provide a safe environment in the event wandering occurs
· Staff members did not respond to an alarm.
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