Detailed Home Safety Assessment Report for Elderly Clients (PSW 164)

This report presents a home safety assessment conducted for an elderly client residing in a two-story home, considering their specific health conditions including osteoarthritis, mild cognitive impairment, a history of falls, and reduced vision. The assessment identifies various physical, chemical, and electrical hazards within the home, such as slippery floors, poor lighting, scattered objects, and potential poisoning risks from chemicals and medications. The report emphasizes the importance of safety modifications to mitigate these hazards, particularly focusing on the client's bedroom, staircase, and bathroom. Recommendations include shifting the client to the ground floor, ensuring a clutter-free environment, improving lighting, and proper medication management. The essay concludes by highlighting the prevalence of fall-related issues among the elderly and underscores the need for proactive home safety measures to ensure their well-being and prevent accidents. The report also references relevant literature to support the findings and recommendations.

1Running head: HEALTH AND SAFETY
HEALTH AND SAFETY
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author’s Note:

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HEALTH AND SAFETY
Health and safety are one of the essential aspects that need to be maintained in any
setting. This will ensure optimal wellbeing of the people in the setting and ensure that the
health is prioritised at the highest level (Kim, Park & Park, 2016). The aim of the essay is to
identify a home and identification of hazards in a different part of the home, the requirement
of modification at home, various hazards that may be harmful for the client population and
implementation of safety modification will be discussed. The client population is elderly
living at a home who have osteoarthritis, mild cognitive impairment and a history of falls,
reduced vision.
The home is a two-storey floor that has three rooms on each floor, a kitchen and two
bathrooms on each floor. It is an almost ten-year-old structure, and four occupants reside in
the house. The occupants include an older adult who has multiple and complex issues, his
son, daughter-in-law and a teenager. With the use of an assessment tool, hazards were
identified that might pose harm to the occupants. The physical hazards include slippery floor
surface, poor lighting, scattered rugs and scattered objects in the hallways. The chemical
hazards include cleaners, detergents used for washing clothes, medication drugs, food storage
and personal care items (Wong et al.. 2017). The most evident type of hazards in the house is
electrical hazards that include electrical outlets and electrical equipment. Others hazards
include burn, suffocation, falls, drowning. According to the Home Safety Council, fall
accounts for more than 40% of nonfatal in case of home injuries and more than one-third of
the injuries results in emergency department admission (Pega et al., 2016).
According to Cohen et al. (2019), it is essential to make sure safety modifications in
different areas of the home in order to ensure the safety and efficacy of the occupants. In the
bedrooms, the electrical wiring needs to be changed from time-to-time. Various items in each
room need to be placed at their proper place so that it does not involve tripping over. The
utensils need to be appropriately were placed, and the fire source should be turned off when

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not in use. The floor should be clean and dry all the time, especially the stair. The household
cleaners need to be in the fresh bottle and not in an old bottle or food containers that can be
confused. The pesticides and other chemicals need to be kept aside and medications need to
be placed in a box so that can it do not involve poisoning issue (Chen, 2017). Old items such
as batteries, cartoons, books and other not useful items need to be thrown away rather than
storing it in the house. Each of the areas in the house needs to be monitored from time-to-
time using the home assessment tool for identification of hazards present in the house.
The older adult who is living in the home is considered to be at potential risks because
of his age and medical condition that includes osteoarthritis, poor vision, history of fall and
cognitive impairment. Therefore, the hazards that can potentially harm the individual are an
electrical hazard that involves faulty wiring. The older man has poor vision and may not see
the fault; as a result, it may lead to shock. Falling from stairs, slippery surface and due to
items scattered in the floor is one of the most common hazards (Romli et al. 2019). The
medical condition that is osteoarthritis affects the mobility of the person, which may lead to
fall incidents. He can swallow poisons such as detergent solutions, syrups or other harmful
chemicals due to poor vision that may lead to even death. The bedroom of the individual is
situated on the second floor, which is of a severe concern as climbing the stair may lead to an
event of falling at a high rate.
For the safety of the older person, the safety modifications must be conducted by
either eliminating or correcting the elements. The first adjustment needs to be done, shifting
him from upper to the ground floor that will ensure that he does not have to climb the stairs,
which is one of the significant risks. The room of the person needs to be clean and minimal
items need to be kept that ensure reducing the risk of falling. The space in the bathroom
should be enough for moving and support from a social care worker can be taken for
managing his medical condition. Moreover, the medication needs to be labelled in the bold

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letter that will allow him to identify them. Restriction in going to the kitchen and upper floor
needs to be done so that the risks of hazards are minimised. His room should be well lit so
that he can see things clearly at night. From the opinion of Yonge et al. (2017), the
unnecessary items from his room, should either be thrown away or removed to the storeroom.
This will ensure a high quality of care and support to the individual who is old and has
multiple disabilities.
From the essay, it can be concluded that health and safety need to be ensured at home
also even though it is neglected in most cases. As per the findings, the falls-related issue is
prevalent at home among the elderly population. The assessment of the hazard of a selected
home and safety requirement was discussed. Moreover, the vulnerable individual was taken
into account for evaluating the risks that may be detrimental to him was identified and the
required modification for ensuring safety and health was made.

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References
Chen, L. (2017). EXPLORING THE FACTORS OF DIFFERENT COPING BEHAVIORS
OF PSYCHOSOCIAL HAZARDS AMONG HOME-CARE WORKERS. Innovation
in Aging, 1(Suppl 1), 1198.
Cohen, S. P., Pelletier, J. H., Ladd, J. M., Feeney, C., Parente, V., & Shaikh, S. K. (2019).
Success of a Resident-Led Safety Council: A Model for Satisfying CLER Pathways to
Excellence Patient Safety Goals. Journal of graduate medical education, 11(2), 226-
230.
Kim, Y., Park, J., & Park, M. (2016). Creating a culture of prevention in occupational safety
and health practice. Safety and health at work, 7(2), 89-96.
Pega, F., Kvizhinadze, G., Blakely, T., Atkinson, J., & Wilson, N. (2016). Home safety
assessment and modification to reduce injurious falls in community-dwelling older
adults: cost-utility and equity analysis. Injury prevention, 22(6), 420-426.
Romli, M. H., Tan, M. P., Mackenzie, L., Lovarini, M., Kamaruzzaman, S. B., & Clemson,
L. (2018). Factors associated with home hazards: Findings from the Malaysian Elders
Longitudinal Research study. Geriatrics & gerontology international, 18(3), 387-395.
Wong, M., Saari, M., Patterson, E., Puts, M., & Tourangeau, A. E. (2017). Occupational
hazards for home care nurses across the rural‐to‐urban gradient in O ntario, C
anada. Health & social care in the community, 25(3), 1276-1286.
Yonge, A. V., Swenor, B. K., Miller, R., Goldhammer, V., West, S. K., Friedman, D. S., ... &
Ramulu, P. Y. (2017). Quantifying fall-related hazards in the homes of persons with
glaucoma. Ophthalmology, 124(4), 562-571.

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