I am David Bracka from Bacchus Marsh Retirement Living. This night we are running the friendliest retirement village in Victoria and in the second part of the series now on safety tips in the home and how to prevent falls, we enter into the bedroom where a numbers of hazards do occur. I will give a few tips here to make sure you are safe. Five tips.
Number one, make sure that your bed is secure. What I mean by that is if it's on casters and you are just getting to bed, you are going to find that it's going to roll. Avoid that. Make sure that you have got caster stops on your bed or have it against the wall somewhere to prevent that.
Tip number two, when you are in bed and it is night, it's dark. you are lying down and you wake up you need to go to the bathroom. So please make sure either you leave the door of the bathroom slightly ajar with the light on, so you can see where to go.
Tip number three, make sure you've got easily to reach lamp by your bed. So you can just turn it on and have some light. A dim light, not enough to wake you up. The best type of lamp is to have a touch lamp, because then you don't have to fumble around with any switches, you just touch it.
Tip number four. When you do get out of bed and you do sit up like that, you will feel your blood pressure drop. There is a -- it's very unwise to just stand straight up. Your head changed, your movement is changed, your blood pressure is dropped, you will feel like -- and then if you get up that's the common cause for a lot of falls to happen. Bang! You land up on the floor.
The correct amount of time to wait until you can actually get out of bed even if you have sense of urgency to rush to the toilet is technically 12 seconds. That's a scientifically proven time factor within that blood pressure comes back to some normality. So 12 seconds. You count to 12 before making any move. I can't stress that enough, that's a critical component.
Then when you are getting out of bed, you might have some hip pains and knee pain, whatever it might be that we are all affected with. We all have lots of of back pain and I am a young fellow, well I think I am a young fellow. So when you are sitting, sit on the edge of the bed, wriggle your bum forward, not too far forward to get off the edge, but like that, put your heels back a little bit towards the edge of the bed and if you lean forward slightly and then your both hands here, you are just leaning up, you are going to be up in the air, in no time with ease without any pain as well.
So they are the tips to remain safe in the bedroom. Sleep soundly and thank you. Stay tuned for the next in the series of safety tips around the house.
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