Home Safety Screening
The fall almost never happens somewhere dramatic. It happens on the rug by the back door, in the dark stretch of hallway between the bed and the bathroom, on the bottom stair where the rail stops short. The hazards are the things you stopped seeing years ago. A home safety screening puts eyes back on them, and on the balance that has to survive them.
Most falls happen at home, in the places you stopped noticing.
A proper screening has 2 halves, and doing only one of them is why so many falls still happen after somebody has already made the house safe. The first half is the environment: what is genuinely on your floors, your stairs and your bathroom. The second half is you: whether your balance, strength, gait and reaction time can absorb a stumble, and whether anything you take makes the room tilt when you stand up too fast. Fix the rug, ignore the balance, and you have relocated the fall rather than prevented it.
What we look at in the home
Loose rugs and curling runners. Cords crossing walkways. Lighting in the halls, on the stairs and beside the bed. Stair rails that wobble or stop short of the bottom step. Grab bars in the shower and next to the toilet, or the absence of them. The height of the bed and of the chair you get out of most often. Clutter on the path you walk at night. And the shoes and slippers you actually wear indoors, not the ones in the closet.
Balance and gait disorders →What we test in you
Standing balance and how quickly you recover when it is challenged. Hip and ankle strength, because that is what catches you. Gait, including whether your foot is clearing the floor the way you think it is. Reaction time. We also review medications with you, since dizziness and light headedness on standing are common side effects that get written off as ordinary aging.
Balance therapy →The cost nobody counts
A fall is not only a bruise or a broken wrist. The bigger loss is confidence. After one fall people quietly stop going down to the basement, stop walking to the mailbox in winter, stop getting out of the chair unless they have to. Less movement means less strength and less balance, which makes the next fall more likely, not less. That loop is the real danger, and it starts before the injury has even healed.
All our services →What you walk away with
A specific list, room by room, of what to change and what it is worth changing first. Some of it costs nothing: move the cord, add a lamp, retire the slippers. Some of it is a hardware store trip. And if the testing shows that the balance itself needs work, we tell you that too, and we can treat it here rather than sending you to look for somebody who will.
Request a screening →Asking for a screening is not admitting anything. It is the cheapest thing you will ever do about a fall you have not had yet. Call (785) 263-3646 →