Accessibility issues and fall prevention are topics that are of obvious and growing importance to long-term care administrators. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, as many as three out of four nursing home residents fall each year. Falls, particularly in the bathroom, are a leading cause of injury and the cost to renovate can be substantial. In addition, many residents feel frustration when they move out of the comforts of their home into a senior care facility due to accessibility challenges, only to find out that the facility they have chosen has many of the same environmental challenges in the bathroom.
Many residents find the task of stepping over and into a standard bathtub extremely difficult and dangerous. The dilemma for many administrators is how to provide a safe bathing environment for all residents with limited capital improvement funds. While many of the potential hazards in the bath area can be addressed with relatively simple modifications such as adding grab bars, non-slip flooring, or raised toilet seats, other potential fall hazards are not as easy for an administrator to address and require a more extensive property renovation.
There are a number of great products on the market to address the issue of lowering a bathtub wall height for easier resident access, including walk-in bathtubs and roll-in showers. Unfortunately, these products are often cost-prohibitive for a long-term care administrator or property manager to provide or implement for all the residents that may need them. However, there are a number of innovative lower cost alternative products that help to address bath safety and resident comfort.
The Safeway Tub Door® is a product that adds a water-tight door to a resident's existing bathtub, for a fraction of the cost compared to tearing out and removing the existing tub. The door can be added to most existing bathtubs, including older cast-iron models, in just a few hours. There are also new seating options that allow for bath seats and benches to be installed in the bathtub area and folded out of the way when not in use. This is particularly helpful if there are multiple residents that share a unit and have different bathing accessibility needs. There are even innovations in grab bar technology that allow grab bars and other types of bath accessories to be placed and installed anywhere in the bath area with unique fastening hardware, without the need to install into wall studs. This allows for the grab bars to be placed where needed, not just where the studs happen to be located.
Finding innovative and affordable methods to provide residents greater bath safety will help to reduce the likelihood of falls and make properties more attractive and marketable, not to mention providing greater peace of mind for long-term care administrators.
Chris Stafford is the president of Safeway Safety Step, LLC. He is a frequent speaker on accessibility issues and fall prevention topics.