Keeping Mom and Dad S.A.F.E.

Mother’s Day was Sunday and it’s got me thinking about how my Mom inspired much of the work I do. My mother was a faller, so taking her outside the house could be an adventure. My Dad did a fantastic job of rearranging their home so Mom could move around safely. There were no rugs to trip on, or thresholds to step over. The lighting was good and set up to respond to her voice; however, she had dementia and couldn’t remember to say “Alexa” to turn lights on and off. Dad renamed Alexa to “Poldark” because Mom never forgot that name. He was the hunk in a British period drama, and she was obsessed.  

My Mom and my niece on Christmas in 2016

Mom loved to go out for a hamburger, so Dad made sure the journey was safe from her bed to the car. She would shuffle from the kitchen to the laundry room through the garage to the car using her rollator. Dad made special modifications for her which even included a handle he attached to the car to give her something extra to hold for support when getting into the car.  

This worked well until it didn’t. One day, a simple trip to get a hamburger ended in chaos which included an ambulance ride for both. Mom, fatigued from walking, sat on her rollator. Dad pushed her, seated, to get to the restaurant. A bump in the sidewalk provided just enough stopping power to bring Mom to a halt, but not Dad. After catapulting himself over her, eventually tipping her over in the process, there were broken teeth, bones, and pride.  

This was not an isolated incident because their world was full of hazards. Several months later, inside a medical clinic with safety standards, Mom fell in the bathroom. My sister, a nurse, stepped into the hallway to ask for help to lift her off the floor. Multiple people with badges passed her and avoided eye contact, as she sought help. She was forced to leave Mom alone in the bathroom to find clinic staff to help her lift Mom into her wheelchair.  

More recently, I visited a hospital in a professional capacity. My co-worker and I exited the hospital to catch our rideshare when she stepped onto a curb that crumbled under her foot. It seemed like she was falling for ten minutes. By the way she moved, some may have even thought she had a bee in her pants. After confirming she wasn’t hurt, we had a good laugh about her dance but later discussed how this was a perfect example of the hazards that exist around facilities. Any one of the recently discharged people around us could have stepped in that spot and the outcome could have been different. It would not have been funny for the immunocompromised cancer patient heading home to rest or the man with fresh surgical wounds from his elbow surgery.  

For years, HD Nursing’s CEO, Dr. Amy Hester wanted to create a simple way for facilities to maintain safe environments from the point of entry to the point of departure. The process of finding the issues and fixing them requires routine and broad environmental scans, tracking, reports, and accountability for corrective action. Once an overwhelming concept, today, this robust approach to patient safety is available and streamlined for ease of use through a new application called the Systematic Assessment for a Fall-Safe Environment (SAFE).  

Falls from visitors and staff have huge implications for hospital leaders in a variety of roles from facilities to employee health to accreditation to finance. To learn more about reducing non-patient falls in your facility, contact us for a demo and pricing.