Dressing & Grooming Tips

For people who have physical or mental impairments, dressing and grooming tasks are often difficult to manage alone.  With your help and encouragement, your clients won’t feel discouraged by their appearance or ashamed that they can’t dress privately by themselves.

Clues that Matter

Dressing and grooming tasks give you daily opportunities to look for clues that trouble may be brewing:

• Be aware of clients’ facial expressions. Clients may tell you that they have no pain, but their faces may reveal the real story.
• Clients get in and out of clothes several times a day.  While assisting them, look over the whole body, making note of any areas of redness, rashes, bed sores or other changes in the skin.
• Report any unusual body odors.  A strange odor may be a symptom of an illness.
• Some health conditions cause the body to swell.  Watch for signs of swollen hands (such as tight rings) and swollen feet (such as shoes and socks suddenly being too small).
• As you brush or comb your client’s hair, check for head lice.  Look for white eggs known as “nits”.  They look like small bits of dandruff, but do not wash or flake off.  Instead, they stick firmly to strands of hair. 
• If you provide nail care, look for white or yellow areas on finger and toe nails.  Your client may have a fungus.

Dealing with Challenges

• Dementia.  Lay out clothes in the order that your client will put them on.  Then, give short, simple instructions to help your client complete one step at a time. 
• Arthritis.  Keep in mind that many people with arthritis suffer from “morning stiffness”.   Their joints may be especially swollen and painful during morning grooming and dressing tasks.
• Pain.  As you assist your clients with personal care, remember that it is your duty to notify your supervisor when you know—or suspect—that a client is in pain.  Every client has the right to feel relief from pain!

Focus on Infection Control

• Hair brushes are like condos for germs.  Soak brushes in soap and warm water and rinse under running water—and please don’t share brushes and combs between clients.
• Eyeglasses are germ magnets.  Keep them clean and dry.
• Keep your clients’ soiled clothes off the floor and put them in linen hampers marked for that use.
• When you get home, either wash the clothes you wore to work right away, or turn them inside out and put them into your hamper.