The team, here at Advantage Home Health Solutions, would like to make a suggestion for your holiday gift list this year. It may sound odd. It may not necessarily be in keeping with the natural order of gift-giving at this time of year. But, we think our suggestion is arguably one of the best possible gifts you can give to someone you love.
We suggest that you offer the gift of safety to the loved ones in your family. This gift is especially important for seniors and individuals with mobility issues. Now, of course, safety comes in many forms. For the purpose of this week’s blog, we’d like to focus on an area of the home where an attention to safety is needed the most: the bathroom. It’s well documented that bathrooms are considered to be among the most dangerous rooms in the home.
The obvious culprits are the slippery surfaces of the floors and bathtubs that make slipping and falling regular risks. Preventing slips and falls in the bathroom is one of the top ways to improve safety in the home.
So, with that comes our first suggestion for your holiday gift list: grab bars.
Our elderly loved ones and family members with disabilities could definitely use some help with their balance. Offering them extra measures of support in the bathroom is a key to preventing injuries. Grab bars do just that. Because strength and balance both decreases with age and is significantly impacted by mobility issues, grab bars are practically essential additions to bathrooms in homes where such individuals reside.
According to Chris Long on TheSeniorList.com, grab bars are among “the easiest and cost-effective ways to make your bathroom more elderly-friendly. Installing grab bars and rails in the shower, bathtub and near the toilet makes bathing and using the toilet easier not only for the elderly person, but for the caregiver as well. The grab bars and rails can be installed yourself or you can hire someone to do the work.”
And now for our second suggestion: walk-in tubs.
The supposedly simple act of lifting one’s legs into a bathtub can present quite the hazardous situation. Coupling diminished balance and strength with the slippery floors of a bathtub, a dangerous outcome is potentially created. Attempting to walk over the edge of a bathtub when the abovementioned factors are present isn’t a wise choice. Walk-in bathtubs make it so that entering the bathtub requires no unnecessary lifting of the legs.
“Walk-in bath tubs…are much easier to access than traditional tubs and most have a built in seat as well,” says Long, “There are many different options for installing a curbless shower or a walk-in bathtub. You can buy and have installed a pre-fabricated unit, or you can do it yourself. The advantage to having a new unit installed is that they are specifically designed for senior care.”
At Advantage Home Health Solutions, we proudly offer grab bars, walk-in tubs and a long list of other bathroom modifications that can make up your greatest list of holiday gifts thus far! For more information about the options we have available to make your bathroom safer, please don’t hesitate to give us a call at 403-460-5438. You may also email us by filling out the form on our Contact page!
