Nursing Care – How to Battle Rising Senior Populations
June 21, 2013
Attorney General Active on Nursing Home Abuse
July 10, 2013
Hidden cameras are used every day to expose and exploit someone for wrongdoing. Within nursing homes, families are turning to this technology to catch nurses in the act of abusing their loved ones. While this may generate a lot of privacy concerns with the nursing facility, filming an abused loved one in a nursing home with a hidden camera is in fact legal in most states.
When this form of abuse or neglect occurs, having documented video evidence in the court room can be a powerful tool in a nursing home abuse case. While it is legal in most states to video tape a loved one in a nursing home, certain states have ramifications about the visibility of the camera, and the camera must be video only, no sound.
New laws are popping up across the entire country regarding the video taping of loved ones in nursing homes. These laws allow family members or even residents to install video recording devices and these new laws prohibit anyone from the nursing home staff from tampering with the devices. Nursing homes are not allowed to reject this type of request for a video camera to be placed in a patients room.
Always remember, if you suspect that your loved one may be being abused, be sure to speak with them directly about it. Each state has hotlines for you to contact to report such abuse. Be sure to check your state laws regarding using a camera in a patients room to see if any abuse actually is occurring. Not only can nursing homes be help legally responsible for the damages to the patient, but the actual nurse can be help on criminal charges if the act was caught on tape. Nurses across the country have recently been charged with criminal patient abuse.
