Conducting a Safety Assessment of Your Senior Parent’s Home

October 14, 2020 0 Comment Category: Senior Health

Home is the place where you relax, rewind, and restore your overall mood and spirit after a long, tiring day. This makes it important to have a place where you can feel comfortable and at ease. For seniors staying at home, it is even more significant. As an unplanned and unkempt home can pose many kinds of risks and safety concerns for older adults, you need to make sure that your elderly parent’s home is safe for them.

Conducting a Safety Assessment of Your Loved One’s Home

From accidental falls to fire hazards, there can be many things which can affect the wellbeing of your senior at home. That is why you need to conduct a safety assessment of your senior parent or grandparent’s home to substantiate that they can live there safely. Below is a quick checklist to help you in that regard.

Check the Medication Management System

It is seen that many of the in-home hazards are caused by improper medication management. In fact, many seniors find themselves in a hospital ER because of the mistakes they make with their medications. It can be because the senior patient either took too much medicine or failed to take the right dose. Therefore, a good medicine management system in place is vital to stay on track of the medication schedule and avoid any risks of overdoses or other issues.

Check the Lighting Solutions

Proper lighting at your senior’s home is more than a security feature for them. While exterior motion lights can help to thwart burglars and other crime, interior lighting can help your elderly parent to move around the home more comfortably. Vision changes are a natural part of aging, so you should ensure that your loved one’s home has adequate lighting solutions around the house to reduce the risks of trips and falls. Night-lights can also help them to go to the bathrooms easily after dark. Rooms in an assisted living facility are specially designed for senior safety.

Check the Smoke Detectors

You should invest in robust emergency alarm solutions to keep your senior safe and enjoy their independent life to the fullest. Aging naturally brings slower reflexes and challenges in mobility with itself, which makes it essential to install smoke and fire detectors at the house to keep them safe. If your elderly parent or grandparent has a hearing impairment, then you can install smoke detectors that flash bright lights or send vibrations to the bed to alert your loved one about the potential problem.

Check the Door and Window Locks

It is believed that seniors are at a higher risk of home intrusion and burglaries. Although that may not be the case always, such as when your senior parent is living in an urban setting, it is always better to ensure that your loved one’s home is secured with robust, working locks. You can also install a home security system at your elderly parent’s home to keep the premises secure. Some home security alarms even allow you to monitor them remotely and check on your loved one regularly.

Check the Fall Hazards

Poor lighting is not the only cause of falls among seniors; there can be many problem spots in the house, which could lead to slipping, tripping, and falling. For instance, loose rugs and carpets, messy extension cords and wires, uneven thresholds between rooms, unsteady stair treads, and bumps in carpeting can pose a great risk of falls. Therefore, you need to make sure that no surfaces in your senior’s home carry any such risks.

Aside from that, you should also install handrails and grab bars across the home to help your elderly parent move around easily, especially in the bathrooms. As part of your safety assessment, do make sure that your senior parent’s documents are stored safely as well so that they do not fall prey to any identity theft or fraud.

A skilled nursing facility or assisted living home can help your senior loved one live more safely. Contact the Falls Home today to see how we can help.