What Could Be Affecting Your Senior’s Ability to Drive Safely?
Driving safely is one of the most important things that your elderly family member can do when she’s away from home. If you or she are becoming concerned about her ability to continue to drive, one or more of these factors could be at play.
Elderly Care Drexel Hill PA – What Could Be Affecting Your Senior’s Ability to Drive Safely?
Senses that Don’t Work the Way They Used To
Changes to your senior’s ability to see and to hear as well as she used to can also impact her ability to drive without problems. Having your elderly family member’s eyes and ears checked regularly can help you to spot problems with these two senses before they keep her from being able to drive at all. If you catch issues early enough, simple corrective devices make a tremendous difference.
Diminished Physical Strength and Flexibility
As your elderly family member ages she may lose both flexibility and strength. She needs both of these in order to safely operate her vehicle. Even if she’s lost a bit of muscle tone and flexibility, there may still be something she can do. Talk with your elderly family member’s doctor about what types and amounts of exercise can help her to become more flexible and build up muscle strength.
Medication Side Effects
How your elderly family member responds to the medications that she takes can be a deal breaker in terms of her ability to continue to drive. Take some time to regularly go over her medications with her doctor. If you or your elderly family member notices new symptoms or side effects, definitely bring those up. It’s possible that medications could interact with each other, too, and compound what were minimal side effects.
Trouble Concentrating or Remembering Details
Changes to your elderly family member’s cognitive abilities can leave her experiencing problems with her memory and with concentrating on the process of driving. This can be scary for you, of course, but it can be downright terrifying to her as well. If she finds herself in an unfamiliar location and doesn’t know why she’s there, she might experience panic.
One of the best things that you can do for your senior as she’s experiencing driving difficulty is to offer her another option. Having elderly care providers on hand to do the driving for her can take a lot of pressure off of her. Let her know that they’re there to help her to get where she needs to go safely so that she doesn’t have to worry about a thing.
If you or an aging loved one are considering Elderly Care Services in Drexel Hill PA, please contact the caring staff at True Direct Home Health Care today.
Doc, as he is called by everyone - staff, patients and clients - first experienced home health care and hospice care while as a colleg student at King's College as he cared for his mother every day while she first battled COPD and then lung cancer. It was during this time that he came to understand that caring for a patient was more than just clinical expertise.
"Admittedly, my strongest attribute is my communication skills and the simple fact that I love to help people. Even the smallest thing you can do for someone really can mean so much to them long term. In fact, it could change them forever. That's what providing quality personal home health care should be all about."
In his spare time, he cooks for homeless shelters and children's music and arts events. He also is highly involved in his local youth sports soccer academy as a coach and Board member.
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