Nursing home injuries are linked to dementia

Nursing home residents who are injured by other residents often may be mentally impaired people who wander into others’ “personal space,” according to a public health study.

“Injured residents were more likely, perhaps unknowingly, to ‘put themselves in harm’s way,’ be verbally aggressive and be cognitively impaired,” wrote Tomoko Shinoda-Tagawa of the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston in a study released Tuesday.

Cases of mentally impaired patients wandering into confrontations and being injured were most likely to occur in Alzheimer’s wards, which can be overcrowded, according to the report.

Published in the Journal of the American Medical Assn., the report suggested using soft barriers, such as netting, to keep patients apart.

The researchers reviewed more than 1,100 cases of violence among Massachusetts nursing home patients in 2000 and identified 294 that involved injuries from broken bones to cuts.

“Our finding suggested that it is possible that some of the residents who sustained injuries may have provoked the attacks ... [by] wandering into another resident’s ‘personal space,’ ” the report said.

It also was possible that a small group of patients who inflict injuries was responsible for most of the violence, they said.