Some many people have found that their loved ones belongings come up missing when they are in a facility for many reasons.
If it is memory care and the residents are free to wander the facility I was thinking it might be a good idea to lock the door to the patient's room.
The way i think it could work would be to install a digital lock on the door that can only be opened with a key code just as some cars can be started as long as you have the key in your pocked.
This could work by applying a secure wrist band to the patients wrist so the patient would be freely able to go in and out as there would be a code on the wrist band that activated the lock. Staff would have a master code card that allowed easy entrance to the room at any time.
It might be somewhat costly to set up but hotels use similar systems all the time.
I am afraid it would not help with laundry mix ups.
I can see a few problems with the idea when it comes to room mates and visitors, I'm not sure how that would work.
I could see how easy that would be, another resident comes into the room and admires something, so the owner of the item will give it as a gift of friendship.
My Dad kept his room key on one of those plastic stretchy colorful ban which he kept on his walker. Many of the other residents did the same thing. Dad knew his door key was always there. If Dad needed to carry something else to get into his room, well it would get lost in a blink of an eye.
Some ideas sound great, like a bluetooth, but too many nursing home residents have hearing aids and glasses.
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I don't think the challenge is technological. It's whether the facility would allow you to put a lock on their door.
Now at MC, most don't seem to realize there is anything behind a closet door. My LO no longer realizes that clothes or shoes are in the closet, so she would never go in there. Still, it could be helpful in keeping things secure. I just think that most of her items like dolls, bracelets, etc. go missing, because she hands them to other residents and they walk off with them. Then they all forget who has what.