I used to wonder why my older relatives would shudder being moved to a nursing home from an old age residence. Moving there not only means living alone, it also means having to compromise ones privacy and there is an additional danger living in proximity to dangerous patients who can enter their rooms at short notice. If they show no recognition of having entered another person's space that could initiate a violent reaction leading to injury.
There are nursing homes where patients are being hurt and patient relatives have complained to the government trying to get their relatives into secure rooms. Security has many facets; patients need to have a better nurse to patient ratio and there is a growing need for tranquil ones are separated from the aggressive dementia ones. What this means is that patients that are aggressive, can literally attack ones who are not and have no memory of what they have done. It can also be difficult to prove that a dementia patient attacked a more lucid one or one who has dementia too and this causes unneeded stress in the family.
It is difficult for us to blame these patients suffering from memory loss that have injured or even killed other ones because they would not have done that had they had all their senses. Some patients have had relatives that have forgiven the assaults because of the aggressor's deteriorated mental health but they also are lobbying for increased security measures so that their relatives can die naturally instead of being accosted in their rooms or in a corridor near their room.
When nursing homes were investigated, it was found that on occasion there would only be one nurse on the premises, too few to be able to take care of an urgent aggressive act and other patients at the same time. If a worker were approached on the topic of an aggressor entering the room of a patient they would take their time getting to the room.
