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Wandering and Elopement

Wandering refers to a cognitively-impaired nursing home resident's ability to move about inside the nursing home freely and without an appreciation of personal safety needs. Elopement refers to the ability of a resident who is not capable of protecting himself from harm to leave the nursing home unsupervised and enter into harm's way.  A nursing home resident's risk of wandering or elopment must be assessed within the plan of care. In a study involving over 15,000 cognitively impaired nursing home patients, researchers from the International Research Consortium on Wandering found that one in five were prone to aimless wandering through nursing home facilities, putting themselves at increased health risk. This study indicates that these are serious problems throughout nursing homes in the United States.

Several factors may increase the likelihood of a nursing home resident becoming injured as a result of wandering or elopment. These include:

• -Failure to hire adequate staff to properly supervise the resident
• -Failure to properly train staff on how to supervise residents
• -Failure to install alarms or other safety devices to prevent wandering

Adverse effects of wandering include an increased incidence of weight loss, fatigue, sleep disturbance, getting lost, injuries as a result of falling and untimely death. Nursing home residents who elope may get lost, not be able to find the way back to the nursing home, and suffer from heat or cold exposure or another medical crisis. Close supervision of residents suffering from dementia or Alzheimer’s disease is necessary in order to prevent wandering and elopment. The Nursing Home Reform Act of 1987 requires nursing homes to provide residents with adequate supervision to prevent wandering or elopement, and a nursing home may be found liable for failing to prevent wandering or elopment while a resident is in their care.