Dental Implants: Pros and Cons

5 Tips to Help Your Loved Ones Avoid Losing Their Dentures in a Health Care Facility

by Brett Clark

Unfortunately, when elders move to an assisted living facility or even go to a hospital for a short stay, they often lose important things ranging from hearing aids to dentures. If you want to ensure your loved one doesn't lose his or her dentures during a stay at a medical facility, there are things you can do. Check out these five tips:

1. Label the dentures

Before your loved one leaves for the assisted living facility, label his or her dentures. Find a relatively flat space near the back of the dentures and use a bit of sandpaper to remove the varnish. Then, write your loved one's name and add a bit of varnish over the name to seal it.

Alternatively, talk with your dentist about labeling your loved one's dentures for you, or if your loved one is having new dentures made, have the dentist engrave his or her name on them.

2. Use a denture cup to store the dentures

At the end of every night your loved one should place his or her dentures in a denture cup. He or she should not put them in a napkin or any alternative storage device. Unfortunately, a napkin may be erroneously thrown away by a well intentioned cleaner.

Denture cups are clearly identifiable and less prone to be accidentally thrown away.

3. Enlist professional help as needed

If you know that your loved one has issues with dementia, hand dexterity or any other issues that make it hard to remove dentures or hard to remember to remove them, enlist professional help. Make sure the assisted living facility, nursing home or hospital staff members know they should help your loved one with his or her dentures.

4. List the dentures in the hospital's inventory of your loved one's effects

In most cases, when patients are admitted to healthcare facilities, the staff at the facility makes a list of the patient's personal effects. Get a copy of this personal inventory and make sure the dentures are on it.

That way, if the dentures are lost while your loved one is in the healthcare facility, you have a record that they arrived with your loved one. In some cases, you may even be able to hold the hospital financially responsible for replacing them if they are lost.

5. Determine who is responsible for the dentures

Ideally, you should determine who is responsible for the dentures before you leave your loved on in any facility. If your loved one is cognitively and physically able to handle his or her dentures, your loved one may be responsible for replacing them if they are lost.

Learn more about your options by contacting companies like Emergency Denture Repairs.

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