How to Help Seniors Live with Loss of Vision By Peter Mangiola Rn Bsn

How to Help Seniors Live with Loss of Vision By Peter Mangiola Rn Bsn

It’s challenging to live with loss of vision, especially for seniors who are facing other health problems. The best way for caregivers and family members to help seniors live with vision loss while maintaining their dignity is to provide them enough support as well as assistive adaptations. How much they should provide depends mainly on the degree of the senior’s visual impairment.

Part of senior care is to research as much as you can about ways to improve vision or helping seniors to adjust to vision loss. A good place to start is the internet. Numerous websites offer practical solutions for improving the lives of people with vision loss. Such solutions come in the form of easy to apply tips, instructional videos, and testimonials.

Another problem that those with low vision face is the risk of falls and injuries which they might sustain while performing everyday tasks. To help solve this problem, here are some useful tips which in home care provider can implement:

1. Always make sure that rooms are well lit. Good lighting is key to safety.
2. Install night lights in hallways, kitchen, and bathroom so that seniors with low vision can easily find their way even in the dark.
3. Use a paint color for door frames and light switches that is different from the walls surrounding them so that they can be easily seen.
4. Place a luminously colored strip of tape alongside the border of every step to make the staircase safer for seniors, especially during the night.
5. For plates and food service articles use placemats of a different color.
6. Put medications in a pill organizer that has talking labels or raised markings to avoid serious medication accidents.
7. Eliminate clutter or litter. Put away things as soon as you’re done using them and store them in the same place at all times.
8. Make sure the television sets are not positioned in such a way that the sunlight or lamplight can shine directly on its screen.

For a senior, the solution to loss of vision may not be complete recovery of sight. It could be providing him with the proper senior care to help him improve his quality of life.