Your 90-year-old mother, who has been living independently, recently experienced a fall that resulted in a cracked pelvis. After spending time in the hospital, she is finally coming home from the hospital today. As you quickly go over her release paperwork, you begin to feel a wave of anxiety wash over you. The list of responsibilities is long and daunting: picking up prescriptions, arranging transportation for physical therapy sessions, scheduling…
Taking care of an older family member often means that you’ll be helping them move around the house, getting in and out of chairs and the bed, or even going to and from the bathroom. Handling these tasks incorrectly can pose a significant risk of injury to both you and the person you love, making it vitally important to know proper techniques for lifting a senior.
At first, caring for Mom may have just taken up a few hours of the week. But now, she’s starting to need help throughout most of the day and maybe even into the night. Now, you’re realizing Mom would feel most secure with someone around 24/7, ensuring her needs are met and ready to tackle any unexpected situations.
According to the CDC, around one in three seniors suffer falls every year, and fewer than fifty percent discuss those falls with their doctors. Often, a senior fall can lead to a serious injury, but even when it doesn’t, the senior can develop a fear of falling. This can lead to limited ability to exercise, a fear of going out and being social, and even a greater risk of another…
The ability to live at home as you age is a wonderful thing. However, the risk of falling in the home is a significant risk for seniors. A simple slip in the bathroom could lead to a fracture, broken bone, or worse. While a fracture may sound mild, approximately one in four older adults who experience a fractured hip pass away within six months of the injury. That is why…
Of all the changes that happen as a person ages, senior bruising is one that can be alarming for family members to observe in their older loved ones. Is it essential to talk to the senior’s doctor whenever there’s a health concern, but it is also important to understand that senior bruising is quite common. Bruising in older adults typically results from the thinning of the skin and a reduction…
Providing the helping hand that empowers seniors to stay healthy, independent, and happy is the intent of not only our professional senior care staff, but of most family caregivers as well. Because the quality of life of older adults is so important to us, it’s crucial that we review a topic that can be really difficult for many of us to even imagine – elder abuse.
While it goes without saying that abusing an older adult is something that would never even occur to most people, it is a tragically prevalent circumstance in the U.S. Elder abuse can occur in many forms, from physical to emotional, and it affects the most frail and vulnerable among us.
Falls in older adults are all too common, and may have dire consequences. If you care for an aging adult, taking the time to put preventative measures in place to protect against falls is vitally important, such as reviewing the home environment for any hazards such as throw rugs, poor lighting, a lack of grab bars and railings, etc. But there’s one additional strategy we recommend as well: creating a…
Improving a senior’s balance is one of the best ways to improve overall health, especially when it comes to fall prevention. After an older adult has had a fall, the person’s instinctive reaction is often to decrease physical activity in an effort to reduce the risk of falling again; yet it’s essential for seniors to maximize their overall muscle strength and balance and remain as active as possible.