Stepping Up Senior Safety During The Holidays
With the holiday season here, it’s easy to get wrapped up in all of the excitement. Most Americans are spending more time in the malls, these days, shopping for gifts for loved ones. They’re also fully immersed in the annual tradition of decorating their homes. And while these activities are fun ways to celebrate the season, they can also present some dangers for our elderly loved ones.
If older adults live in your home, it’s always important to practice safety measures that will help them to avoid injuries. However, during the holiday season, when decorating is the norm, it’s advisable to make the home festive in as safe a way as possible. For example, live trees are considered fire hazards. It’s probably best to go with the artificial variety when putting up a Christmas tree in your home.
Go with Shatterproof Ornaments
Kansas City-based Hearts At Home also reminds us that if the senior in your home would like to partake in the tree decorating activities, it’s best to go with shatter-proof ornaments. “Although older decorations are certainly a treasure, many of them are made from fragile glass,” their website points out, “An option to keep both the ornaments and the senior safe is to take out and enjoy viewing and sharing stories about glass ornaments, but then hang only shatter-proof decorations on the tree itself.”
It’s also important to keep in mind that holiday decorations can present tripping hazards. This is especially true for lights. With the addition of several cords and wires in your home, you’ll want to make sure that they are tucked away and kept out of the walkways of your home. Slips and falls make up the top culprits for senior injuries and hospitalizations each year.
Slips and Falls Injure Millions of Seniors Every Year
As explained by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, each year, 3 million older people are treated in emergency departments for fall injuries. As well, over 800,000 patients a year are hospitalized because of a fall injury, most often because of a head injury or hip fracture.
Hearts At Home adds that avoiding electrical accidents should be at the top of your holiday to-do lists. Their website recommends checking your strings of lights as well as your other decorations that require electricity. That includes all extension cords used to provide electricity to your holiday decorations.
“Updated guidelines for holiday lights were established in 2015 by the Consumer Product Safety Commission to include over-current protection, a minimum wire size, and other standards, so it’s a good idea to replace any older electric decorations with newer, safer ones,” reads HeartsAtHomeUSA.com, “And, be sure to unplug all lights and decorations when they’re unattended, such as when leaving the home or going to bed.”
Consider Shower Bay for Your Elderly Loved One with Mobility Issues
This holiday season may be the perfect time to welcome a Shower Bay portable showers to your home. If you live with a senior who battles with mobility issues, Shower Bay eliminates any risk of slipping and falling in the shower. The portable shower can be snapped together in any room of the home with a faucet nearby allowing a shower wheelchair user to roll in and take a full shower with running water.
If you have any questions about our portable showers, please don’t hesitate to contact us to ask them. Give us a call at 1-877-593-4461 or email us at info@showerbay.com
