Violent altercations between residents in long-term care facilities are becoming more common, and skilled nursing facilities are trying to create "violence-free zones" to improve patient care and staff safety, NPR reported Aug. 8.
A recent JAMA study found 15% of assisted living residents experienced verbal, physical or sexual resident-on-resident aggression, and 8% of such residents engaged in physical aggression or abuse toward residents or staff within the previous month.
Dementia patients are especially likely to be involved in altercations due to the way the disease affects the brain. More than 900,000 people with Alzheimer's or other types of dementia live in nursing homes or assisted living centers. Many live in roughly 5,000 facilities, most of which are for-profit and charge thousands of dollars each month, according to NPR.
The chances of violence are worse when facilities admit and retain dementia patients they cannot manage, the report found. Some keep these patients due to the money brought in; however, many facilities have too few staff or nonexistent training for employees to reduce instances of violence.
"As much as long-term care providers in general do their best to provide competent, high-quality care, there is a real problem with endemic violence," Karl Pillemer, PhD, a gerontologist at Ithaca, N.Y.-based Cornell University and lead author of the study, told the news outlet. "There needs to be much more of an effort to single out verbal and physical aggression that occurs in long-term care, and begin to create a model of violence-free zones in the same way we have violence-free zones in the schools."