I recently moved my mom into memory care. She has her own room, but shares a bathroom with shower in a Jack and Jill set up. However, the bathroom doors do not have locks and her neighbor (and others) walks into her room whenever she wants to. I’m told they can’t install locks on the bathroom doors for safety reasons. I don’t understand why or whether that is true.
The only way someone could be locked in the bathroom would be if someone else came into their bedroom and locked them in. In which case, we would hope that the trapped person would be able to use the emergency pull cord, which I’d expect a memory care bathroom to have
There would still be an issue of people being able to barge in on each other in the bathroom. This could be less of a problem with the type of Jack and Jill bathroom that is divided into three segments, with each person having their own sink and toilet and sharing a bathing area with another set of doors in the center.
Of course, we’ve read about memory care facilities that don’t have locks on the hallway doors for the bedrooms, so we can’t assume that everyone in memory care can deal with locking and unlocking a door.
Please remind the facility that it is their job to make sure mom has her privacy. if its an AL she pays extra for that service. Sorry if they are short staffed. if that's the case then they need to subtract this inconvenience from her bill. Pretty sure mom is on a point system. every kind thing they do for your mom is a point from 1 to 5 and that can be expensive.