Candy for the call bell

Most people are familiar with a call bell, a push button device that one presses in their hospital bed to get the attention of the nurse. Now days, most hospitals have integrated call bells into the same devices that operate the television set. The result is a single, hand-held device with a small array of buttons. Most people have no problem discriminating between the buttons, but I have seen elderly people have difficulty with this. This is more likely to be the case at night, when the room is dark and the patient wakes up somewhat confused and needing help. In that situation, trying to sort between the call button, TV power button, channel buttons, and volume buttons can be a challenge.

Yesterday, I saw a family come up with a great solution. They taped a pre-wrapped piece of sucking candy to the call bell. This way when the person wakes up at night, he/she no longer has to search amongst a bunch of buttons that all feel the same. The patient now just needs to feel for the big piece of candy and press down on it to ring the call bell. What a great idea!