If you look after a senior who struggles with osteoporosis, balance problems, cognitive challenges, or some other condition that makes them more easily fall, you may find yourself constantly worrying about that senior's safety. No matter how much effort you put into your role as caregiver, you can't eliminate every such risk.
Fortunately, you can breathe a little easier once you know how to help your senior get around more safely and easily. Take a look at four smart steps you can take to reduce fall risks for the senior who is physically frail in your life.
1. Install Handrails and Grab Bars
Handrails and grab bars offer a simple means of giving your senior much-needed support for various everyday tasks. You can install handrails that extend the entire length of hallways and stairwells to make walking a less frightening proposition. Shorter grab bars can help seniors use toilets, tubs, and kitchens with greater confidence.
Those new grab bars and handrails in your home may prove valuable to more than just the senior in your life. You may find them highly useful for maintaining your own balance as you assist your senior with toileting, bathing, or showering, preventing injuries that might otherwise render you unable to provide such assistance.
2. Provide Walking Aids
When you consider that older Americans experience 36 million falls each year (producing many reported hip fractures), you can see the importance of providing that extra degree of stability for seniors who suffer from vision, strength, or balance issues. Walking aids can make a major difference in preventing these falls.
The type of walking aid your senior can benefit from the most depends on that individual's baseline health and limitations. For instance, a light cane might prove sufficient for seniors who only need occasional help, while a heavier quad cane provides greater stability. However, hand problems can make both options impractical.
Walkers help support a senior's full weight, but they can prove awkward to use and, like canes, require a certain amount of hand and arm strength. Individuals who can't easily use these devices may find their safest and most comfortable solution in an electric wheelchair.
3. Schedule Geriatric Physical Therapy
Seniors who lead a sedentary lifestyle can experience serious muscle atrophy that eventually robs them of their stability and makes them more vulnerable to falls. To counter this trend, you may want to add a course of geriatric physical therapy to your senior's home health care routine.
Geriatric physical therapy focuses on light, safe exercises that tone the muscles, increase range of motion, boost cardiovascular endurance, and improve balance. These exercises can give your senior the leg strength, flexibility, coordination, and stability to get around with less risk of falling.
4. Hire a Companion Care Professional for Your Senior
Even after you provide assistive devices and geriatric physical therapy for your senior who is frail, you may still worry about accidents that might occur while you go to work or run errands. However, you can keep your senior as safe as possible in your absence by engaging a companion care professional.
A trained companion care professional can watch over your senior, fetching items, preparing snacks, offering medication reminders, and assisting on short ventures outdoors. This type of professional can also provide equally important mental and emotional support by chatting, playing games, and generally keeping your senior engaged.
If you need help and guidance with any or all of the above steps, you'll find it at A Visiting Redi-Nurse. Our skilled team provides both medical and non-medical assistance for seniors, including companion care when you can't supervise your senior yourself.
Contact us today to learn more about our range of services.
