Improving the Bathroom Safety of Your Loved Ones Home

If you want to improve senior home safety for your loved one, then you should start by looking into bathroom safety. It’s in the bathroom where most accidents occur. Slips and falls in the bathroom are more common than in other rooms throughout the house for one simple reason: the tile or linoleum floor and moisture make for a slick combination. Here are three simple steps that you can take to help make senior home safety a little better for your elderly loved one, whether it’s your mother, father, grandparent, or someone else.

1. Remove tub surrounds. If your loved one have a basic bathtub, then you should consider having it replaced with a shower stall. When you have a tub, then you have to step over it in order to get in and out of the shower. This can cause problems for a senior who may not have the strength, or balance, that he or she used to have. By replacing the tub with a shower stall, then your loved one will be able to step into the shower on a level surface.
2. Install sticky pads on the shower floor, as well as the tiles. Using stick pads can help to prevent slips. Once an elderly person begins to lose his or her balance, it is usually more difficult for him or her to regain their balance. By installing these stick pads to the shower floor as well as throughout the bathroom, you will improve bathroom safety immediately.
3. Install grab bars. Grab bars are a great way to help your loved one maintain his or her balance while they are in the shower. If you are beginning to lose your balance or slip, your arm tends to flail out and your hand looks to grab onto something for balance. Most of the time, this is probably going to be a towel rack, or something of that nature. They won’t hold the weight of a full grown adult. Grab bars, on the other hand, will.

These are just a few steps that you can take to help improve the overall safety of your elderly loved one’s home. If you want to find out other information about things that you can do to make your loved one’s home safer, contact a home care services agency or senior center in town today.