H(OT) 5: Dressing

Transcript

Rachel: Hi and welcome back to the H(OT) 5 Tips and Tricks. My name is Rachel Read. I’m an occupational therapist and EHR clinical director. I’m here with Jenn Ruoff, director of OT services, And we’re going to go over the H(OT) 5 Five techniques for dressing today.

So we’re going to start off with some basic kind of dressing skills that everyone needs to be able to do and just some tips and tricks on how to do them, using various adaptive equipment and techniques.

So the first one, Jenn is going to be our model for the beginning half.

One of the first items you can use to assist with dressing is a long-handle reacher. So, these can be really helpful when you’re trying to reach for items that are outside of your normal balance.

And so, what I would do too for Jenn is I would an instructor to use the reacher to reach for her socks that are maybe on the floor. This can help Jenn feel more comfortable when she’s home dressing independently — that she’s not going to fall and to protect her from being to be as safe as possible.

Jenn: Thank you.

Rachel: So now that Jenn has her socks, another challenge she may experience is being able to put the socks on.

So, Jenn, the first thing you want to try to do to use the sock donner is that you’re going to take your sock and you’re going to thread it onto the plastic part, okay, so just like this and you want to bring it all the way so that you don’t have any of this showing so it’s nice and flat here, okay?

Now I want you to give that a try.

Jenn: Got it.

Rachel: Good. OK. So now you’re going to use the handles to kind of bring it down and then you could thread your foot into the plastic hoop. Good. And then pull it off and, tada, the sock is on.

Good job, oh yeah. You can do the other one.

Jenn: How am I going to put my shoes on.

Rachel: Oh, we’ll get to that.

Jenn: Oh, perfect.

Rachel: Good job. So one of the concerns Jenn has is being able to tie her shoelaces. And so, a good solution for that is using elastic shoelaces.

Jenn: So what I did was I took out the shoelace to the one shoe and replaced them with elastic shoelaces so she won’t need that one anymore… Well, she’ll need it later but I’ll have to replace those

Rachel: So, elastic shoelaces can be really helpful because they are elastic, so they have a little give and you can open up the shoe without having to untie and tie back again. So I would give this to Jen, and say, “Go ahead and give this a shot.”

Jenn: Oh I can’t get it. I can’t get in the back.

Rachel: Okay, so I have a solution for that. So now that we’ve addressed the shoelace issue she can’t get her shoe on. So you have two options that you could use the adaptive equipment we have today.

This is a long-handled shoehorn. You just put it in the back of the heel and then you’re going to slide your foot in and try to just wiggle your foot in. So this really helps in keeping the heel stabilize so that you could put it in.

Perfect. Good job. They look a little big on you. I’m not sure if they’re your shoes.

Jenn: Yeah, I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I’m falling.

Rachel: Oh, maybe. OK.

So another option that we have for the shoe, and if you could take that off so I can give you the other option, is a shoe funnel. So this can be another solution. Kind of like the shoe horn where you put this into the shoe into the entire top part of it and it holds up the entire heel and then the sides of it.

So this could be somebody who has a really difficult time may be within manipulation of the shoe horn. They could put this in and it’ll stabilize everything for them.

So what you would do is you would kind of fit it in just like that, okay? And then you would try to slide your foot in. You could hold the back laces that way once you get it in, you could pull it off.

Good job. Now Jenn is going to address the upper body.

Jenn: Alright, so with the upper body, what we find with older adults, mostly women, they have a difficult time putting on their bra. And some of the times as occupational therapists, we don’t even ever ask the question are they not wearing a bra because they choose not to or they’re having a difficult time with it.

So some adaptations that we would recommend for putting on a bra would be to have a front-clasping bra. So if they have one of them in their collection of bras, it’s a fantastic option to be able to clasp it from the front and not have to close it and reach around the back so she can clasp a couple here and that would allow her the ability to have more control for her fine motor — to not have to have the range of motion to clasp it in the back. So she could do that option.

Another option she could do would be to clasp it while she’s holding the bra and then to put it on like a shirt. I always recommend when I’m giving this option to not clasp the couple bottom clasps so that they’re able to put it on it’s a little bit looser and it’s not too tight. So they would just flip it and put it on just like they would a shirt, put their arms through and put it over their head.

The last option would be if they do not have any front-closure bras would be to clasp it the back. So if they have no front-closure bras, what they would do is they would take a back-closure bra, turn around the front, clasp it, and then twist it around the back and flip it up.

So those are our recommendations. Just to review really quickly: We did the shoe horn, the reacher, the sock donner, the thread for the shoes, the elastic shoelaces, front-closure bra all can be purchased on Amazon.

What I would recommend is: I have one of all of this equipment that I keep in the trunk of my car for trials, so that I can utilize them with patients and try them. But, all these items can be purchased on Amazon pretty cheaply.

So, thanks again for coming to our H(OT) 5 series on dressing and we will see you next time.