고령자의 요양 중 사고에 대한 법적 책임

Abstract

Recently, as more elderly people are going into the care facility for senior citizens, disputes are increasing between the elderly person and the facility. Senior citizens always have the possibility of the accident because of their bodily vulnerability. In addition, as the issue of human rights and self-reliant life of elderly people has become more emphasized, it has become much easier for accidents to occur. However, if the responsibility for accident prevention is strengthened too much, care facilities are tempted to imprison the elderly person. Therefore, it is necessary to clarify the standard for duty of care and responsibilities of those facilities. In this study, first, I research the elderly care accidents in comparison with the medical accidents. Legal rules of medical accidents are helpful to deal with the elderly care accidents because they have the similar responsibilities. Nevertheless, they should be differently conceptualized in the perspective of welfare, which is more emphasized in the area of the elderly care. It is not allowed to improve the elderly self-reliant life at the risk of the elderly safety. This is because the elderly care accidents may have arisen by uncontrollable causes. This research focuses on both the domestic and foreign cases dealt with the elderly care accidents and results in legal rules which are the most commonly applied in the case of the falling injury and the food swallowing disorder. Those legal rules provide that, in the case of falling injury, if care helpers negligently breach the duty of care for the elderly patient, they may be responsible for the injury. However, if the falling injury has happened during rehabilitation treatment, it is difficult to recognize negligence. Also, when deciding negligence in the case of swallowing disability, it is important to check if there was a proper response to the swallowing disability because it is not unusual for the elderly to have the swallowing disorder. For example, whether care helpers properly respond depends on how often they look at the elderly patient.