Recovering at home after a serious motorcycle accident

Motorcycles can be a great way to explore the great outdoors but can be very dangerous. When riders have an accident there can be a long recovery period and it's often more comfortable to be able to carry out some of the recovery at home.

Here are some things to organise to allow your loved one to head home. 

Buy or hire some assistive devices

Whilst recovering, the patient may need to have some extra help getting in and out of bed and navigating the bathroom. You can hire items such as shower chairs and hospital beds from medical supply stores. You may also need to reconfigure the house, if you have a multi-storey home, to bring everything to one level. Even if the patient can navigate the stairs, they can often tire easily, especially in the early days of recovery.

Organise home help and transportation

The patients will have a range of visits to medical services and therapy while they are recovering. While where possible the therapy can be done in-house, there will still be specialist appointments and therapy that will require visits. The rides can be arranged either by friends or family or through a range of commercial home assisted living organisations who often have access to vehicles that can take on wheelchairs or have easier access for people with limited mobility. The hospital can often recommend local service providers. 

If the patient lives at home by themselves, it can often be useful to organise some additional home help for non-medical tasks, such as cleaning and gardening, which can be hard to complete whilst still injured. Friends and family can often help out, but given the length of recovery it can also be a good idea to use some formal home help as well. 

Co-ordinate some nursing services to visit the house

In addition to organising trips to medical appointments, it can be useful to bring as much medical assistance as possible to the home. Nursing staff can help to dress and redress wounds, as well as helping to bathe the patient and do a range of other tasks such as perform routine medical checks and help the patient with doing some of the at-home therapy exercises. The hospital can often help to organise these services through an outpatient service. 

With the right preparation, a patient can have a much more comfortable extended recovery in their own home, rather than a staying in a hospital.