Has anyone else heard of this happening in a nursing home?

Never.

I haven’t heard the same story about a broken arm, but there’s no question that frail, elderly people often die from bone fractures. A broken hip, pelvis, or leg seems more likely than an arm, given all those falls. The body’s defenses are compromised; the fracture can’t heal, and the surrounding tissues become infected.

At my mother’s facility, she had a next-door neighbor who died this way. He was 100-years-old, completely “with it” and as sharp as a whip. (I would listen, in amazement, as he had intellectual conversation with his many guests.) He fell, broke his hip, and was gone within a week. His mind may have been fine, but his body couldn’t recover from that kind of trauma.

Nope.

My wife has been working at nursing homes for 21 years and she has never heard of this happening. Perhaps osteoporosis is a factor.

I have heard of elderly individuals dying from complications due to broken bones.

Never specifically this problem. I’ve heard of dislocations, and falls leading to broken bones, and nursing assistants ending up with sprains and broken bones and herniated discs.

It’s a place where people go to be taken care of until they die. Eventually dying is kind of part and parcel. Sometimes it happens quietly and naturally, other times they catch infections due to one thing or another. It’s always sad, but never really unexpected.

If this did happen the way you say, I’d call it incidental, certainly not a sign of abuse. If the infection was due to poor hygiene or serious bedsores, that would be a different story.

I’ve heard of elderly people breaking hips or legs, and then they become bedbound and end up with pneumonia and die. Therefore the death is indirectly due to the broken bone.

Nursing homes have procedures for lifting residents, transferring residents (which means moving them from one place to another, for example moving from a wheelchair to the bed). I’m quite sure that grabbing residents’ arms in order to move them is not a proper procedure.

A good friend is a supervisor in a large nursing home. I’ll ask her next time we speak.

My Dad died 10 days after a fall left him with a broken hip in the nursing home.

Yes, I’ve heard of similar cases. Staff in nursing homes are frustrated with dealing with the old and infirm, and commonly take their frustrations out on the elderly, which is unfortunate, but understandable. Of course, at 95, bones are very brittle; and it wouldn’t take much to break them.

Broken bones can be deadly in the elderly as other people mentioned. My sister once told me 50% of the elderly die when they get a hip fracture. I don’t know how accurate that is, or exactly over what age she meant, but I believe it. When my grandma had a hip fracture the hospital allowed her to develop bed sores and my sister had to tell them what to do to treat them. Literally, she dictated what medication to use. Then, my grandma developed pneumonia and they were waiting to get an Xray on her. Finally, after a day or two of waiting my sister, after listening to our grandmother’s lungs again, called the doctor herself and told him to prescribe some Levoquin. He did it.

My sister is a nurse who cared for the elderly and HIV patients for a large part of her career.

Probably, my grandmother would have died in the hospital if my sister had not been so vigilant. My grandmother at minimum certainly would have suffered more without my sister.

Forgot to put my qualifiers in there: My mother was a CNA, so is my sister. I used to do my mom’s qualification exams for her, and I spent over 10 years volunteering wherever she worked, so there’s plenty of anecdotal experience there.

No…..not around here. Around here they have to use a hoist or have at least tho people to reposition someone in bed.

My Mom worked as an Executive Secretary in a Christian Retirement Home, and she had a few stories about caregivers being very abusive.

The stories around the plight of frail people in nursing homes are grim and numerous. Low end institutions in particular are often so hazardous to the well being of residents that the dangers are barely disguised. One of the consequences of living thru my mid 60s was the striking increase in time devoted to visiting people confined to such places. And I can tell you emphatically that if someone matters to you and is shut in one of these institutions, their quality of care and very survival can hinge on the frequency of visits by vigilant outsiders. As your examples indicate, it is the staffing situations at the orderly level or those physically handling the patients where the shortcomings are glaringly pronounced. I have yet to encounter any situation comparably fielding so numerous a collection of foreigners conforming to central casting “Igor” stereotypes. It’s a remarkable thing to experience, though grim in its implications.

It was on the news over here just yesterday that an 81yr old resident was shot & killed by her 80yr old husband, himself a resident in the same nursing home.
Now that i’ve never heard of, the mind truly boggles.

Stanley, that is so true.

Those places trade nursing assistants like cheap baseball cards. It wasn’t uncommon for my mom to work in four different facilities over the course of a year. There are also temp services that put people who don’t know your loved ones at ALL in facilities as a warm body to make up ratios when they’re in between “permanent” employees.

and remember, my mom wasn’t doing her own licensing exams. I was, starting at 13 years old

Honestly, most of the reason I’m actually willing to live with my mother in law is because I know too much about nursing homes.