Mom is 96 and is a right side leaner she has fallen 5 times in 90 days out the bed that’s as low as it can go to the floor. She’s gone to the ER twice with a scare on her forehead but no broken bones (yet).
The Nursing Home says they can’t put up bed rails I’ve asked about cushions bedside on the floor to ease the fall but they said they can’t do that either because it’s against the law. Each time she falls there no way of knowing how long she’s been lying on the cold floor. She’s always be high tolerance for pain and she can’t tell them if she’s hurt.
My fear is that they don’t see any thing wrong external but there will be something internal if she keeps falling on that hard cold floor.
Any suggestions on what they can do?
And just how low is the bed at it's lowest setting? There are specialty beds that lower to within 6" of the floor, if the facility doesn't have any available you might ask about their providing one or if you could provide or share the cost of one.
Using risk management;
liklyhood of bed fall *very high*,
likelihood of injury *extremly high*, severity of incident *severe to catastrophic*
Yes it is tricky for staff to manoeuvre people from the floor mattress back onto the bed. (This needs to be done to enable raising the bed to attend to personal care & get up from safely).
Is the facility worried about staff injury? Yes they should be. But also their resident!
Maybe they need staff training on how to use slide sheets to transfer a resident from a floor mattress (aka crash mat) onto a bed. If I can do it with Covid positive confused dementia patients I'm sure any trained NH staff can do it.