The home lift chair recliner: Making life in the home more comfortable for many in my Community.

Recently i posted here about my growing awareness of mobility issues for those elderly and disabled individuals living in my community. I would like to now take the opportunity that this blog gives me to look further at the subject of mobility aids.  For almost ten years now, I have been employed as a health care worker in a community care environment, and my experiences during this time have given me an increased awareness of the issues that the disabled and the elderly must face in their own homes on a daily basis. One obvious issue is that of mobility in and around the home. Many people are aware of how taxing it can be to get about the neighborhood but don’t seem to understand the challenges involved in getting around one’s own residence.

There are many individuals who feel that they are not yet at the point where they really need the assistance of an electric or mechanical wheelchair to get about their own residence but they do need the assistance of various mobility aids to live comfortably at home. For example, someone might want the help of a mobility walker to assist them in getting from room to room, or even just the assistance of a properly designed walking stick to move around without difficulty. I have had a number of clients who are not at the point of needing either a motorized wheelchair or medical mobility scooter but do necessitate the support of a walker to move about and to get out and about from their home and into the community. An individual who doesn’t require constant seating but who does need to be able to rest after traveling for a short distance benefits from the ability of the walker  to serve as a seating surface while out and about performing their daily duties.

One thing that I recall one of my elder clients having in his home was a powered lift chair. This was quite an impressive mobility device. The theory behind the lift chair recliner is that it offers all of the relaxation of your typical recliner while simultaneously making it easier for folks with constrained mobility to sit down and stand up from their chair. The standard lift chair recliners allow the user to recline the backrest and the footrest of the chair but they go further than that. The lift chair also has a vertical lift control that the user can use to raise the chair up at an angle. By doing this, the occupant is slowly and steadily raised up in the chair to a near standing position allowing him or her to easily leave the chair. This vertical raising motion makes sure that the occupant is able to safely remain in the chair until it has finished moving. When it is time to once again sit in the chair, the controls can be used to slowly and steadily lower the chair into a comfortable sitting position. It is important that the chair offers the user slow and steady movement so that a feeling of security is maintained for the user. This kind of mobility aid has also been described as a handicapped lift chair, but i am not completely comfortable with that more pejorative choice of name for it.

For the sake of the user’s comfort, it is important that the lift chair is a suitable fit for the intended occupant. It is possible now to purchase, without any real difficulty, a lift chair that matches the shape and size (height and weight) of the intended occupant. Failure to match the chair to its user can compromise the occupant’s safety.  Speaking of safety, there are a few safety features built into most standard home lift chairs at present; Nearly all lift chairs have a constant pressure switch built into their remote control device. This is to make sure that the control only activates when intended: if the hand held control should be dropped or similarly released, the up or down motion will stop, ensuring the occupant’s safety so that they are not unwillingly tipped out of or lowered into the chair against their will. An additional safety feature is the battery backup: if, for whatever reason, there should be a lack of power to the chair – such as a power failure in the immediate vicinity – then the battery backup can take over, allowing the chair’s user to continue operating the chair and not be stranded there for any protracted amount of time. From what I can bring to mind, the most familiar type of battery used for a backup in these chairs is the nine-volt. Needless to say, just like with smoke detectors, it is essential to remember to switch the battery once a year even if it does not get used.

Overall there are three different categories of lift chairs. These three categories are used to describe how far back a lift chair can stretch out. The first category of lift chair is known as the two position lift chair. This kind of lift chair is capable of reclining back about 45 degrees. Even as it is not recommended for sleeping in, this style of chair is favorable to viewing television in or for reading a book. The next category of chair is known as the three position lift chair and is perhaps the most widespread one on the market. The backrest reclines nearly horizontally, the consequence being that it is a chair wonderfully cut out for to reading, watching some television or even sleeping. The third manner of chair which also lays claim to a commonly available design is called an infinite position lift chair. This model of chair reclines as far if not slightly farther than a 3 position lift chair, however the footrest is capable of moving independently. In other types of lift chairs, the footrest moves in conjunction with the backrest, but infinite position lift chairs allow these two components to be adjusted separately. This makes the lift chair much more customizable for the customer. Akin to the subject of customization, I also trust that it is doable to order a lift chair in a variety of colors and patterns from a variety of manufacturers as well as an assortment of a mixture of replacement lift chair parts if the necessity for such replacements should arise.

I hope that this helps to illuminate the particulars behind the conventional home lift chair and what to watch out for when in the market for such a piece of furniture.

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