Alzheimer’s disease (AD) poses a number of safety issues, especially if the senior is still at home. This article focuses on precautions you can take to make the home safer for a senior with AD.

If a senior with Alzheimer’s disease is still at home, the caregiver needs to follow all the usual safety precautions, such as having a working fire extinguisher and smoke alarms in the house; making sure that appliances and heaters are working properly; and keeping extra food, flashlights, and blankets on hand (in case of earthquakes, power outages, or other emergencies). However, there are additional precautions you may want to take to protect a senior with AD.

Remember that AD is an illness that affects the ability to think and process information clearly; therefore, a senior with AD does not always recognize obvious dangers. The following checklist can be used to make the environment safer, and protect seniors with AD from everyday dangers.

• Examine both the bathroom and the kitchen with an eye toward potential hazards. In the bathroom, you can install safety locks on cabinets containing medicines, household cleaning agents, razors, or other potentially dangerous items. Alternately, you can move these items elsewhere (for example, some caregivers decide to lock medications in a large toolbox, with a padlock). In the kitchen, you can put safety locks on drawers or cabinets containing matches, liquor, knives, or any other item that strikes you as potentially dangerous.
• Put safety knobs on your stove, or install a timer so that the stove can only operate during certain hours. (You may need to consult with an electrician about installing the timer.)
• Remove locks from bathroom and bedroom doors. A senior with dementia might lock a door and then not remember how to unlock it.
• Check outside the house for potentially dangerous items such as saws, lighter fluid, power tools, and paint. Put such items in a locked garage or tool shed.
• If you have a swimming pool, take precautions to prevent the senior from falling or wading in, for example, installing a pool cover designed for this purpose or putting up a fence with a locked gate.

In addition to these rather obvious dangers, there are some hidden dangers related to impaired judgment and slowed reaction time; the following suggestions are designed to minimize such dangers.

• Do not allow a senior with dementia to smoke unattended.
• Consider having the senior in your care wear an ID bracelet containing medical information and a phone number. People with dementia have been known to wander away from home. Sometimes the police find these individuals wandering, and without identification, are unable to immediately locate or return them to their families.
• Lower the temperature on the water heater to 120 degrees, and label all hot-water faucets clearly with large, red letters. Seniors are at risk for scalding because of their thinner skin and slower reaction times, and a senior with dementia is even at greater risk, because they don’t recognize the danger.
• Consider whether the senior should still be driving. Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive illness, and there will come a time when the senior absolutely should not drive. If the senior cannot recognize this, you, the caregiver, may have to take the keys away or even dispose of the car. Ask a physician for guidance in making the decision, and for help in talking with the senior about this potentially difficult transition.

Finally, each individual is unique in their interests, history, and even the course of their illness. Assess the senior in your care with that uniqueness in mind, and you will be able to see dangers, and solve problems, that this article may not have addressed. For example, did your father love to cook? Can he still use knives and the stove with supervision, or not at all? Did your great-aunt love to refinish furniture? Can you let her use the power sander and solvent with supervision, or not at all?

It is important for seniors to stay active, and involved in the things that interest them as long as possible, but there comes a point when certain activities just have to be “off limits.” Again, ask the physician for help in establishing these important guidelines.

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This entry was posted on Monday, January 28th, 2008 at 11:49 pm and is filed under In-Home Care. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.