Nursing Home Abuse Report » Types of Nursing Home Abuse

Signs of Elder Abuse

How Can You Tell If Your Loved One is a Victim of Abuse?

Medication, diseases and illness make it difficult to detect signs of elder abuse.

Read common signs of elderly abuse

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Types of Nursing Home Abuse

Nursing home abuse can be physical, emotional, financial and sexual. It also includes neglect and healthcare fraud.

Physical abuse is the willful inflicting of pain or injury to an elderly person and can range from slapping or shoving to severe beatings and restraining with ropes or chains, hitting, beating, pushing, kicking, pinching, burning, or biting. It can also include such acts against the older person as over- or under-medicating, depriving the elder of food, or exposing the person to severe weather-deliberately or inadvertently.

Financial abuse is the improper act of using the resources of an elder for someone else's benefit without their consent is financial abuse and can range from misuse of an elder's funds to embezzlement and includes fraud, taking money under false pretenses, forgery, forced property transfers, purchasing expensive items with the older person's money without the older person's knowledge or permission, or denying the older person access to his or her own funds or home. It includes the improper use of legal guardianship arrangements, powers of attorney, or conservatorships. It also includes a variety of scams perpetrated by sales people for health-related services, mortgage companies, and financial managers-or even by so-called friends.

Emotional abuse of an elder is the causing of mental or emotional distress by means of humiliation, intimidation or threats and can range from name-calling or giving the "silent treatment" to intimidating and threatening the individual. It can also include treating the older person like a child and isolating the person from family, friends, and regular activities-either by force or threats or through manipulation.

Neglect is another form of elder abuse and is the failure to provide food, water, clothing, shelter, hygiene, medication, safety and comfort by someone who is responsible for the elder and includes strategies that withhold appropriate attention from the individual to intentionally failing to meet the physical, social, or emotional needs of the older person.

Sexual abuse is the coercing of an elder through force, trickery, threats or other means into unwanted sexual activity and can range from sexual exhibition to rape, inappropriate touching, photographing the person in suggestive poses, forcing the person to look at pornography, forcing sexual contact with a third party, or any unwanted sexualized behavior.

Healthcare fraud and abuse is carried out by unethical doctors, nurses, hospital personnel, and other professional care providers and includes duplicate billings for the same medical service or device, overmedication or undermedication, inadequate care when bills are paid in full and poorly trained, poorly paid, or insufficient staff or crowding at the care facility.