5 Quick Tips for Dementia Caregivers About Changing A Pull-up or Brief
Is your loved one struggling with incontinence?
Managing incontinence is a common challenge for caregivers of loved ones with dementia. This episode offers practical insights into using pull-ups and briefs, helping you maintain your loved one’s dignity and comfort.
Understanding the Basics: Pull-Ups vs. Briefs
Incontinence products like pull-ups and briefs are essential tools for caregivers. Both serve the purpose of protecting outer clothing and maintaining dignity. But they cater to different needs.
Pull-ups are similar to underwear. They are discreet and comfortable for those who are still mobile and relatively independent. They’re ideal for outings or when your loved one wants to maintain a sense of normalcy.
On the other hand, briefs look more like traditional diapers. They are more absorbent, making them better suited for nighttime use or for loved ones with more severe incontinence.
Quick Tips for Using Pull-Ups
1) Know Your Loved One’s Mobility: Pull-ups are best for those who can still move around on their own. They’re easier to wear and remove, especially if your loved one can lift their hips or stand briefly.
2) Prepare the Pull-Up: Before putting it on, crumple the pull-up to soften the fibers. This makes it more comfortable and ensures a better fit.
3) Be Discreet: If your loved one is heading out, pull-ups are less bulky and more discreet under clothing. They are perfect for public outings like doctor’s visits or lunch with friends.
4) Mind the Absorbency: Pull-ups are suitable for light to moderate incontinence. They’re not ideal for heavy wetting, so consider using briefs at night.
5) Easy Removal: Most pull-ups tear away at the sides for easy removal. If needed, keep a pair of scissors handy to assist with this.
Quick Tips for Using Briefs
1) Choose Based on Absorbency: Briefs hold more liquid, making them the better option for overnight use or for those with more severe incontinence.
2) Adjust for Comfort: Briefs are more adjustable, accommodating different body shapes. Pre-fastening the tabs before putting them on can make the process smoother.
3) Best for Bedridden Loved Ones: Briefs are easier to change when your loved one is lying down, which can be less stressful for both of you.
4) Consider Additional Pads: For extra protection, you can add pads inside the brief to increase absorbency.
5) Prioritize Dignity: Always approach this task with a calm and supportive attitude. Your loved one will respond better if you are confident and unflustered.
Final Thoughts
Incontinence care is a sensitive and essential part of caregiving. By using these tips, you can help your loved one maintain their dignity while ensuring they are comfortable and well-cared for. Remember, being prepared and staying calm are key to making this process as smooth as possible.
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158. 5 Quick Tips for Dementia Caregivers About Changing A Pull-up or Brief
[0:01] Well, what’s up, Christian caregiver? Welcome back to Christian Dementia Caregiving, the podcast where we teach Bible-believing Christians how to make dementia caregiving easier for you so that you can continue to create moments of joy and actually have hope during this journey. I trust that you have been finding tremendous value in these quick little episodes that are a little more practical related to taking care of somebody living with dementia. I figured that doing a series of these quick tip episodes might help you in your journey and give you a couple of of ideas on how to do things a little bit differently.
[0:50] Today’s episode, and I know that these episodes are a little different because they’re way more practical than some of the other types of episodes where we work on really our thinking processes about caregiving, but it’s more than just how we think about caregiving. It’s the actual skills to perform care to a person that we help, that we love. So I thought that this mini series of quick tip episodes might be beneficial for you to have in your back pocket. And today’s episode is going to be about how to change a pull-up or a brief.
[1:32] Now, before we can talk about how to change a pull-up or a brief, We need to look at what the difference is between a pull-up and a brief, and when one is more appropriate and when another one is more appropriate. So let us start with that very practical discussion about the differences between a pull-up and a brief. They are the same but different. They both have a purpose of protecting the outer clothing for a person who is having trouble maintaining or controlling their bowel and their bladder. So they are both types of incontinence products. And the purpose behind incontinence products is truly to maintain the dignity of the person who is wearing them and protect the outer clothing from becoming soiled. The reason for that is immediately once the outer clothing becomes soiled, we know that that person has had an accident, that there has been a problem. So let’s start with pull-ups. What are pull-ups? Well, pull-ups.
[2:49] Part of it is in the name, right? It is something that you just pull up over your hips, similar to underwear, and generally they can be more discreet and they feel more like underwear. They are not super comfortable, specifically if you’re not preparing the pull-up before you actually put them on. A lady that I worked with many, many years ago taught me this trick. She would take the pull-up and she would kind of rub it a little bit, kind of warm it up, kind of crumple it a little bit around the middle part so that it would conform to her body more and kind of loosen up the fibers of the pull-up. And pull-ups are generally considered to be a little more discreet, and they are preferred by people who are more mobile or more independent.
[3:50] A brief is a type of a product that looks more like a quote-unquote diaper. They come with tabs that open completely and are secured on the sides. The biggest difference between a pull-up and a brief, other than how they are put on, is how much liquid or how much fluid they are able to absorb and which one is easier for the caregiver to change. And so pull-ups can be changed both in bed and sitting on a toilet. A brief can be changed also in bed and sitting on a toilet. it. It’s just very much a skill set level of care. So let’s start with five quick tips.
[4:43] For using pull-ups. One of the biggest differences related to pull-ups is we need to know how mobile the person is. If the person is very mobile out in the community, wearing a pull-up can be an easier transition because they look like underwear, the person can put them on, more like underpants if they’re still able to get dressed. And if you are able to put them on If you need to put them on laying in bed, the person needs to be able to lift their hips up to pull them up over their hips. You can put a pull-up on both in bed as well as in a toilet or on a bedside commode. The second quick tip for using a pull-up is when we want to be more discreet. Briefs are bulky and pull-ups conform to your body more so they look more like underwear. But part of the problem is that if the person is, if the volume is too much, then discretion goes out the window. So we have to consider that.
[5:57] But if a woman, if somebody is going to a concert or something or out in the community for lunch or a doctor’s office, and we typically may be using a brief at home usually, but when we’re going out into the community, we want it to look a little bit more conforming to the person, then we can try a pull-up for that period of time. Another quick tip for pull-ups is it is.
[6:28] Vastly, and I’ve kind of alluded to this a little bit, it is better used for people who are not having big periods, a lot of urine, very much suited to light or moderate incontinence. It doesn’t hold a flood. Another benefit or quick tip for using a pull-up is most pull-ups tear away way at the side, which means you can either tear it, and if you’re not strong enough to tear it, you can also use a pair of scissors by putting it in the bathroom and make sure that you can take them off easier. If you are helping somebody with a pull-up, there is a technique that you can actually change a pair of pull-ups without taking a person’s pants on and off. However, that can be very challenging if you haven’t seen it. And in order to help you with that, we actually have a video of me showing how
Changing Pull-Ups: Tips and Tricks
[7:29] to change a pair of pull-ups for somebody without taking their shoes and socks off. And you can find that on our YouTube channel, and we will include the link in the show notes below.
[7:51] Are you a Christian dementia caregiver struggling to cope? Does dementia caregiving really need to be this hard? I invite you to join our free monthly Ask the Dementia Coach meetup. Get personalized guidance and support from me, a pastor’s wife, occupational therapist, and Christian dementia coach. By blending evidence-based strategies with Christian principles, you can radically improve your caregiving experience. Register Register now for our next session of Ask the Dementia Coach. We limit registrations, so don’t miss out. Sign up today.
[8:41] So that’ll be fun for you to actually go look at. A certified nursing assistant actually taught me that trick many, many years ago, but it is a great way to change a pull-up without taking people’s shoes and socks off. I promise it is possible. You need to go check it out. Another couple of tricks that I want you to consider, quick trips, quick tips, is to prepare the environment, to make sure that you have all of your supplies in the bathroom or in the bedroom wherever you’re going to change this person’s pull-ups or briefs.
Transitioning to Briefs: Essential Guidelines
[9:19] Those are five quick tips for pull-ups. Now we’re going to go into five quick tips for briefs.
[9:29] And this yet again, and they’re very similar, pull-ups and briefs are very, very similar. They really do, the biggest difference is in how much it absorbs. So the related to making a decision to use a brief is when you absolutely need to have more fluid be able to hold for people who are heavy wetters, especially overnight. So sometimes you can use a pull-up during the day and use a brief at night because briefs are more absorbent at night. So make a decision related to the absorbency. Somebody who is more independent typically does better with a pull-up, especially at the beginning when they may be a little reluctant to start wearing incontinence products. But later on, most people living with dementia will not have a particular awareness that they are wearing a pull-up or a brief. Another quick tip for you using briefs is they are way more adjustable for fitting around the person. But a great initial quick tip strategy is to put the tabs on before you put them on and put them on like a pair of pants or put them away, especially if the person’s sitting. So if the person is sitting…
[10:59] The brief on and fasten it before standing them up so that you can pull them up and then you can adjust the fit. So that is a great technique to be able to do. A quick tip for using a pull-up, a brief in the bed is make sure that, you know, the person can roll because it’s a little easier to change a brief in bed than it is to change a pull-up in bed. So when somebody is a little more limited in their mobility, it is sometimes easier to change and clean them in a laying down position than a sitting up position.
[11:40] Another quick tip for using a brief is it can accommodate different body shapes. Brief is easier to adjust to that person’s unique body shapes. And another trick that you can use with the pull-up, I mean, I’m sorry, with the brief is that, and actually with the pull-up, so we’ll use this one for both, but you can actually put additional pads inside the brief and the pull-up to help with some additional fluid or absorbency. Now, remember the purpose behind incontinence products is to protect the outer clothing so that we can protect the person’s dignity. That is what we’re going for here. We’re going for dignity. But a couple of general guidelines and a couple of general things that I want you to keep in the back of your mind is that you want to maintain dignity and comfort. You want to always have your environment prepared.
[12:41] You want to decide if you can do it in a sitting position or if it needs to be in a laying down position. position, you can try to distract the person as you’re helping them with the task, give them short directions.
[12:56] The more confident and the less grossed out or upset you can be when performing the care, the better the person is going to respond. If you come in with a, I don’t want to do this attitude, or a reluctant in helping with these very personal tasks, the person that you are helping will actually sense that and will make sense, and it will make it harder for you to actually perform this task with them. I know that this is a very hard topic for a lot of people, and if you’re not there yet, just kind of file this episode in the back of your mind.
[13:43] If the person living with dementia lives long enough, at some point or another, they will need help with this particular task because they lose the ability to complete this task with good quality.
[13:59] Which means when they have bad quality, they’re more prone to urinary tract infections, other types of infections,
Understanding Incontinence: Caregiver Insights
[14:10] and all of the negative sequelae that can come from not having done this. Now, something that I want you to keep in the back of your mind, this has come up several times as I work with people, a person might look like they are changing their pull-up or their brief by themselves, but due to not recognizing that it might be wet or soiled, they may be reusing it and become prone to having urinary tract infections. So if you have a loved one who is having multiple urinary tract infections they may not actually be changing their pull-ups like you believe them to be changing their pull-ups so a bonus quick tip is that you can consider you know knowing exactly how many pay attention to how many of the products are actually being used specifically on somebody who is using a pull-up and is more mobile and is doing this themselves because they may not actually be changing the pull-up because they grew up in the depression eras. It doesn’t look like it is soiled, but every time it’s like underwear.
[15:25] They need to be changed every single day. They cannot be used repetitive days in a row or else you will open up a can of worms for yourself that you don’t want related to infections.
[15:39] So these are just five quick tips as well as a description or explanation of
Upcoming Events and Personal Support
[15:45] the difference between a pull-up and a brief. I trust that this episode has been valuable to you even if you’re not at a point where you’re actually needing to do peri-care or private cleaning of somebody. I hope that you will remember this episode when it occurs in the future and come back to it and just get a quick little education related to.
[16:12] Changing a pull-up or a breathe. Now, if you haven’t yet joined me for the Ask the Dementia Coach monthly meetup that I do, our next Dementia Coach monthly meetup is August the 22nd at six o’clock Eastern. This is your opportunity to hop into a Zoom room with me and other people in our community where you can get some one-on-one coaching from me related to any specific question you have related to challenging dementia behaviors or how to take care of a person living with dementia. I limit the signups to 12 because I want to make sure everybody has enough time. Not everybody shows up who signs up, so usually we’re only two to four people in the the Zoom room, but it is a co-creation opportunity for you to be a part of this podcast and actually get your specific individual questions answered to your particular situation.
[17:21] We can maintain your privacy. You do not need to use your own name. We can take your video off. You don’t need to come on camera, whatever we need to do to maintain your privacy. I am open to doing that, but this is my way of giving back and asking you to help formulate this podcast into what it is that would be beneficial and helpful to you. So I invite you to message me the word ask to Instagram or Facebook Messenger, just the word ask, and we will send you the link for you to sign up for.
[18:04] August’s Ask the Dementia Coach. I do hope you take me up on my offer for some free dementia coaching. As I end all of my programs or try to, may the Lord bless you and keep you, and I will see you in our next episode.
