Falling at any age could be a lot painful and complicated. Falling when you are a senior is a bit more complicated because your body is fragile and it needs more time to heal. This is the reason seniors and their caretakers/family members need to ensure that a person doesn’t fall accidentally.
As the Canadian health system has failed to provide quality care for seniors, it is essentials that the loved ones of the seniors do everything in their power to make a senior feel comfortable and a major part of it includes ensuring that there are no fall injuries.
If you are a caretaker or a family member of a senior, and you are wondering how to prevent falls in seniors, then we suggest that you go through and adopt 5 tips for fall prevention in the elderly mentioned right here.
Table of Contents
Taping the Area Rugs is Smart
The first modification you need to make to ensure maximum comfort and fall prevention of the elderly is to tape down the area rugs in your home. Many older adults fall because they don’t realize that area rugs can be a major health hazard. As the caretaker or family member of the elderly, you should realize that when area rugs are not secured properly on the floor, the probability is high that they will roll up or buckle at the corners and hence make an older adult fall over them.
Install Quality Safety Supports
There are many safety support products available with reputed brands like Mobb Healthcare such as grip balls, crutches, etc. that help an older adult to move, sit down or sit up without any support. Investing in these safety supports is essential if you want to ensure that even if an older adult loses his or her balance, he or she doesn’t fall because he/she had a strong grip over the safety supports. People who intend to let an elderly live in their home for a few days or weeks can rent these supports, but if you are planning to let an elderly live with you for long, you should buy these safety supports.
Use Nightlights
Nightlights are not only meant to keep the kids safe, but they are also meant to keep the elderly safe at night. You should reduce tripping hazards by placing nightlights in the room of the elderly, the path that leads to the bathroom to ensure that an elderly never falls at night when all he/she wants to do is visit the bathroom on his/her own. If the home has stairs, make sure that every step is well lit because falling from the stairs can lead to serious injuries and even death in some cases.
Declutter Regularly
When an older adult comes to live with you, you need to make sure that there is minimal clutter at home. You may not realize it, but little things like kids’ toys lying on the floor or your work shoes in the middle of the drawing room can pose a threat to a senior’s safety. So, you should declutter your home at least twice a week. If you have never done it before or you aren’t able to do it right a lot of times, then you should consider reading these 7 steps to decluttering home that are easy to follow and very thorough as well.
Buy Some Non-Slip Mats
Non-slip mats are quite easily available online or offline. You would be smart to invest in them because they can make potentially slippery areas like kitchen and bathrooms safer. As bathroom and kitchen usually have water on the floor, the elderly is more at risk of falling in these rooms than anywhere else.
It is also advised that you accompany an elderly to the bathroom or kitchen whenever possible and tell the older adult about how the non-slip mats have been placed to help them. In cases where there is a lot of water in the kitchen or bathroom, you would be smart to let the elderly know that he or she needs to avoid the area for a few hours.
Conclusion
In essence, it can be said that though there are many ways of preventing falls in the elderly, the 5 tips for fall prevention in the elderly mentioned here are the most basic ones. You are free to explore some other ideas like living on one level or buying quality shoes and clothes for the elderly. The more you explore, the safer would be the elderly and the lower would be the probability of dangerous elderly falls.
You should also realize that no matter how hard you try, the possibility of falls is always there. So, you need to ensure that you keep an eye on the elderly by using monitoring devices and provide him or her with an alarm that they can use to call for help if or when they fall.