Automatic Door Opener

Automatic door opener

Is a power door opener a luxury or a necessity? Frankly it depends upon how much effort it takes to open the door another way. I have plenty of friends and clients who use mobility equipment who might say they've gotten used to the extra steps they use to open and close doors compared to those of us who stand and walk. We don't have to think about our balance, backing up with our mobility equipment to get out of the way when we are moving the door, or having to turn our walker or wheelchair around and approach the door again in order to close it.

Lever handles and building in some space beside the door when possible, so a person can stand or sit to the side of the door while it swings open past them are two manual ways to make opening a door easier for some people. Of course sometimes it isn't practical to provide additional space beside the door.

Two manual approaches to closing the include tying a string to the door and catching it with your hand or  wheelchair as you pass through and adding an extra handle. These pictures from www.howtoadapt.com shows both. When I work with people who choose to add a handle whether it is screwed in, magnetic, or suction, I strongly suggest they take the extra time to turn around and reach forward to get hold of the handle in order to protect their shoulders, but that of course takes time.

Opening and closing a door with the push of a button seems like a really good idea to me. It could protect a person with poor balance, save a person time and aggravation, and frankly make it possible for some people to handle the task on their own. Total Home Access Solutions, installs Open Sesame Power Doors in private homes and residential communities.

This American company provides a reliable door opener that is flexible enough to work with in-swinging or out swinging, right hand or left hand doors, which allows my clients to re-use their opener if they move. We can provide a variety of switches which best meet a person's requirements.  These openers don't interfere with another person's manual use of the door and charge themselves so they are always available even if the power goes out. Give us a call if you want more details about how these doors work.

Is a power door opener a luxury or a necessity? If you can't open the door any other way; If the cost of remodeling to provide room around the door exceeds the cost of a power opener; if you run the risk of falling when you operate the door; or if you would like to get through the door and close it behind you with the same effort that most people expend, I think you'll be among the people who consider a power door opener a necessity for successful independent living.

Let us know what you think!  BPhillips@Totalrr.com

The SureHands Lift and Care Systems Body Support Can Help with Clothing Adjustments at the toilet

It takes more than just getting into the room to be able to make use of the toilet.  You need to deal with your clothing as well.  What if you can’t stand up or balance while standing?  What if you are a caregiver for someone who depends upon you to transfer or move from one surface to another?

One solution is the SureHands Lift& Care System Body Support.  It can be used with any of the ceiling based or wall based motors.  Unlike many slings, the body support leaves the buttocks area clear during the secure transfer.  This makes this a great lift support for speedy, secure, and often independent transfers, but it is also great for clothing adjustments during toileting.

Once a person is positioned over the toilet, pants can be moved over the hips to the level of the body support.  This is easier with looser pants.  Individuals with sufficient hand strength and dexterity and  arm mobility may be able to do this themselves.  It is a relatively easy task for most caregivers.  Once the person is lowered to the toilet, the thigh and chest cuffs become loose.  As the thigh cuff is removed the pants can be pulled further down each leg.  Some caregivers find it helpful for hygiene to lift a person into the air slightly for cleaning.  Other people can accomplish cleaning while seated.

When the person is ready for pants to be pulled up, the top of the pants are gathered and pulled up as high on the thigh as possible. Work with one leg at a time.  Sometimes you will need to repeat this process.  If a person’s leg can’t be lifted high enough to clear enough space to pull the pants up, a caregiver can prop their leg up on something or lean them slightly  to the side.  The goal is to gather the pants up so that most of the fabric needed to pull over the hips is over mid thigh.  Place the thigh cuffs just below the gather of material and lift the person slightly.  With the cuffs at mid thigh the person’s buttocks will be lower than usual so best practice is to lift just high enough to clear the toilet and work fairly quickly to pull the pants up over the hips.  Depending upon how tight the pants are, this step may take a little tugging to clear any folds of fabric at the thigh cuff.   Lower to the toilet and reposition the thigh cuffs correctly as high up on the legs toward the hips as possible.

The body support makes dressing during toileting activities possible for many people.   Give us a call today if you have any questions or wish to schedule a private consultation.

402-291-9514

Is your bathroom the scariest room in your house?

Are you afraid of what may happen when you are in your bathroom? Do you stay up at night wondering just how safe your older parents are in their bathroom? If so, you are not alone. Ask anyone what is the scariest place in their home and if they have a disability or mobility/balance issues, they will probably tell you it is the bathroom. It doesn’t have to be that way.

We know instinctively that the bathroom is a dangerous place. Falls occur from slips and trips. Slips occur most often on wet surfaces. What floor do we tend to drip water on most often? Trips come from obstructions we don’t see. Which room is often small with limited storage so things may be placed on the floor or on storage shelves placed in the walkway? Many falls occur when lighting is inadequate. What room in older homes is usually lit by a single set of lights that we reduce even further when we close shower curtains? Better yet, if we wear glasses, what room do we routinely take them off in? Other falls occur when a person’s ability to balance isn’t adequate for the tasks they are engaged in. What room requires us to step over a 15” high barrier such as the side of a tub, get on the floor such as getting into a tub, bend over such as pulling up pants after toileting? To top it all off, which room of our house is so small that if we fall on the floor we are likely to block the door shut with our body so no one can get in to help us? Of course we know the bathroom is a scary place, but it doesn’t have to be.


Safety can be improved in most bathrooms with careful attention to matching the environment to a person’s abilities and a willingness to try something new. It may be as simple as a well placed grab bar or a rug to absorb moisture that is really slip resistant to. For some homes, it may be a little more involved such as replacing a standard tub with a barrier free or walk in shower, or adding a walk in tub. Thinking about making a change may be difficult, but consider the alternative.

Take a look at these facts from the article Falls Among Older Adults: An Overview the Center for Disease control www.cdc.gov

• More than one third of adults 65 and older fall each year in the United States (Hornbrook et al. 1994; Hausdorff et al. 2001).

• Among older adults, falls are the leading cause of injury deaths. They are also the most common cause of nonfatal injuries and hospital admissions for trauma (CDC 2005).

• In 2005, 15,800 people 65 and older died from injuries related to unintentional falls; about 1.8 million people 65 and older were treated in emergency departments for nonfatal injuries from falls, and more than 433,000 of these patients were hospitalized (CDC 2005).

• The rates of fall-related deaths among older adults rose significantly over the past decade (Stevens 2006).

How can we look at facts like these, know the bathroom is one of the most useful, but most dangerous places in our home, and still not take action to save ourselves and people we love?

Take action today. Educate yourself on ways to make your bathroom safer. It may be easier and less expensive than you think it will be. If you want some help planning a functional and beautiful bathroom experience give us a call. You are worth it.

Access client shares his wood working access ideas with a web site!

Another Reason Why We Love Touching People’s Lives!

When Bob contacted me to improve the accessibility of a house he and his wife had recently purchased, we sat together and discussed what was important for him to do in the house.   His determination to resume woodworking was clearly almost as important to him as being about to move through the doorways of the home and to be able to use the fixtures in the bathroom safely.  He had us work on access through the house while he worked on creating a workshop that was accessible to him.

A recent amputation meant he needed to use a wheelchair at times and he was having difficulty using his wood working techniques designed for a person who can stand and balance.   He went on line for some helpful ideas and found only one article related to wood working and access.  Bob did not let this stand in his way. He took the initiative and started the website http://wheelchairwoodworker.net/ to share his innovations of making his wood working shop safer and more accessible with other people who had similar disabilities.

Bob’s website is active in two ways; he is first documenting the transformation of his workspace from the large traditional shop he had in his previous house to two separate rooms in his house. The second way Bob uses his website is to bring people to together so they have a platform to share their thoughts and input.  Bob states that his website has been an overwhelming success and encourages people to not be afraid to speak up on his site. Bob gives a great deal of thanks to his wife, who happens to be an occupational therapist and was not afraid to encourage and push him toward recovery.

Accessibility is about making your home a place where you can do what is important to you.  Please contact me if you have any questions about removing barriers for daily activities like bathing or cooking, but also about removing barriers to enjoying recreation too.

Oasis Seated Shower System™ a new way to bathe people

Oasis Seated Shower System™  a new way to bathe people

Helping people bathe is not one of those activities that most of us spend much time worrying about.  Of course we were taught the importance of good hygiene from our parents and our mentors as we growing up.  Of course we are influenced by the multitude of advertisements for personal cleaning products.   For the most part though, we jump in and out of our showers and tubs without a lot of effort or thought about what we are doing.

When a person is unable to clean themselves, the bathing activity requires a great deal more attention.   Even if a health professional is the person doing the bathing,  being undressed and allowing someone to touch you is a process that is uncomfortable socially for most people.     If a person is unable to stand up, getting really clean around the genitals and anus may be very hard to accomplish.   Health professionals such as Nurses and Occupational Therapists spend a great deal of time and energy devising procedures and ways to help keep other people clean.  The consequences of inadequate hygiene such as UTIs (urinary tract infections) can be very debilitating, or even life threatening for people.

If reading my last paragraph made you a little uncomfortable, imagine what trying to clean someone else must be like or what having someone bathe you must be like.  

I'm really excited to present the Oasis Seated Shower System™  because I love to help people find solutions.  This technology allows really excellent cleaning with less hands on touching during the process.  People are still present and still helping with moving a person, drying them, doing little extra touches with hair, hands, or feet so there is still the one to one human contact, but some of the most uncomfortable and difficult  cleaning is taken care of with no touching.  Dangerous things like having a person with poor balance standing or leaning to the side to clean the buttocks area are eliminated.  

The Oasis is easy to use and set up.  It uses the existing shower water supply and drain so there is no construction.  It  actually uses less water than a traditional shower or tub and because water doesn't circulate inside the seat, it is a very clean and low maintenance piece of equipment.

Here is a link to another cool video about the Oasis.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZfOsPTtWsPI
Remember, in a few short years, you will be able to say, "I was among the first to see the Oasis.  It was the start of how we bathe people today!".  


Right now I have a loaner I can take to facilities and let a few people try it out for themselves to see how much better their residents and bathing staff feel using the Oasis than they do using the old fashioned methods.    If you have any questions about how it might fit for you, give me a call 402-291-9514 or email, BPhillips@Totalrr.com.

Check out our flyer!

Welcome to Our NEW Blog! - Don’t Waste Your Money using ADA Accessibility Guidelines

Should you follow ADA guidelines when you remodel your home for accessibility?

It sure would make it easy if you could just use the American with Disability Act Guidelines as a cookbook when you need to make your home easier to live in. You know-Open to page 5, look at diagram 35-B and presto!  An exact list of what to do to make your bathroom accessible.

But I have to tell you, using the guidelines this way is usually just a recipe for disaster.  The guidelines are designed for commercial applications.  They address the needs of a mythical average person with a disability, not the needs of an individual.  If you or your remodeler  use them for your home they should serve only as the minimum standard for situations in which the guidelines are incorporated into the building codes of the city where you live, for example ramp design in the Greater Omaha area. Sometimes you can use them as a starting place for the information you need about what might be useful for you.  You should never believe that a product labeled as ADA compliant will automatically work for you.

One of the saddest wastes of money I’ve ever seen occurred when a family thought the ADA description on a shower unit was all they needed to know.  The family contacted us after the shower was installed. There was a high school aged daughter with a physical disability requiring the use of a wheelchair.  All her life her mother had lifted her out of her wheelchair and put her into the tub and then back again.  The girl was bound for college.  Mom didn’t want to go to college with her so they were doing everything they could to help the girl learn to be more independent with self care to prepare her.   They decided to remodel the bathroom so she could bathe by herself.

A family friend who was a contractor said he would help.  This friend found a shower unit that had information on the box indicating it was ADA compliant and everyone agreed that was the shower they wanted.  He took out the tub, put in the shower unit and really did a very nice job.  Unfortunately, it was not possible for the girl to move into the shower by herself after all because of where the built in seat was located, and now the Mom had to actually step in and out of the shower to get her onto the seat.  Worse yet, the seat was so small that the girl couldn’t balance on it and Mom had to hold her in place.  The result was the new shower, that was labeled as ADA compliant, was more disabling to the girl than the tub it had replaced and the money the family had saved up for the remodeling was gone.

It was too late, but there were several types of freestanding seats costing under $600 that would have worked with the original tub,  a removable device that would have lowered into the tub that was under $2,000,  and several different types of shower surround that would have actually worked based on how the girl transferred, or moved from surface to surface.   This family learned the hard way that ADA guidelines don’t always work for every individual with a disability.

Don’t waste your money by using the ADA guidelines as a shortcut. Rather than starting with the guidelines a better way to design accessibility remodeling that will work, is to start with your goals,  your abilities,  and to take advantage of the huge selection of  equipment available today to find an answer that meets your needs, your budget, and your style.