When our oldest relatives start to pass beyond their golden years and into a time when they need extensive care, sometimes the kindest thing that we think we can do for them is to put them in a situation where they will be cared for by a staff of professional nurses at all times. In some cases, however, this well intentioned act takes a deadly turn as nursing homes neglect and sometimes outright abuse patients.

Elder abuse and nursing home abuse are not isolated or rare phenomena. Like the shaking of babies when children cry for reasons that an overly stressed parent cannot fathom, the constant needs of the elderly can cause over worked nurses to snap. No one sets out to work in a nursing home just to abuse people, but stress and a difficult job can combine to set terrible acts in motion.

The problem with nursing homes is that they are often understaffed, with too few nurses to care for the patients. Call buttons might be ignored for quite a while as these overworked nurses rush from patient to patient just trying to get everyone's most basic care finished with before they respond to calls.

Some nursing home patients might wait hours for just a drink of water, especially if they make frequent requests like this, and might end up with bed sores from nurses without the time to turn patients regularly.

With horror stories like these, and worse stories about nurses disabling the call buttons of residents who are very needy or even patients falling out of their beds and breaking bones, you might think that you should spring for the extra money for some kind of in home care.

Do not think that elder abuse happens just in professional facilities. With no one to watch them and no consequences for giving poor care, in home nursing care can be just as bad for a stressed out nurse and her patient as nursing home care can be.

The question becomes how to protect our loved ones from nursing home abuse and neglect and help them to get the best care possible. The answer is to check in often with your nursing home. While searching, keep a few things in mind for your visits, and never place an elderly relative in a nursing home that you have not paid at least one visit to in order to check things out with your own eyes.

Drop in on a few of the patients and talk to them. The more coherent ones will be able to tell you how they like living in the nursing home, and how well they are cared for. They will be grateful for the visitation, and you will be able to get a good idea of how the nursing home is run.

Also talk to the people in charge to find out how many nurses are scheduled during all hours. There should not be more than a couple of patients per nurse at any time, even if this does get expensive for the facility. That standard of care is what you should be paying for.

Talk to the nurses, too, and ask them if there have been any incidents, and whether they feel that they are short staffed or well covered. You will find that many of them will be open and honest with you about staffing issues or other problems that you might not have heard about elsewhere. When you are through talking to the nurses, go to the police.

Ask them if they have gotten any calls to the nursing home, and check with the hospital to see if they can tell you whether they have had to take a lot of the nursing home patients in for things like broken hips or infected bed sores.

Once you feel that you have a clear picture of a good home, help ensure that it stays that way for your loved ones. Call often to check on them, and visit them often as well. The more that the nurses see that the family is involved, the more they will see your loved one as someone worthy of care rather than just another job to be done.

You want to be able to see your family members often to make sure that they are doing well in the nursing home and that they have no complaints. Even small things should be taken seriously to prevent nursing home abuse or neglect.