The Missing Shower Bar: A Long-Term Care Ombudsman Story

It came up during a resident council meeting.

Several residents said a grab bar was missing from their preferred shower room—the one they used because it was the warmest. These were residents who could still shower independently, but only safely with that bar in place.

They weren’t complaining casually. They told me they had reported the missing bar more than a month earlier. A grievance form had been completed. The issue had been “under discussion.”

They had done everything they were supposed to do.

After the meeting, one of the residents took me to the shower room. Sure enough, the safety bar on the wall was gone.

As the long-term care ombudsman, I spoke with the administrator and explained that the residents had filed a grievance and that the missing bar posed a safety risk. He called the maintenance director, and the three of us stood there talking.

The maintenance director said he was aware the bar had fallen off the wall and that he had repaired it, but it had fallen off again.

I asked what had been done since and whether they had found a way to ensure it remained repaired.

“Well,” he said, “when I went back to fix it, the shower bar was gone. I think the residents took it.”

I considered the absurdity of that suggestion—that a couple of residents using walkers had somehow dragged a four-foot metal shower bar down the hall. Presumably to do what? Hide it? Dispose of it?

I restated my position.

This was not an individual problem. This was a building safety issue. The bar needed to be fixed properly. If the original bar couldn’t be located, a new one needed to be installed.

I reminded them that Home Depot and Lowe’s were less than three miles away—but more importantly, that the issue needed to be resolved before someone got hurt.

I returned the next day.

The shower bar had been replaced.

The residents were relieved.

This case wasn’t about residents failing to speak up.

They had spoken up. They followed the process.

They filed the grievance.

They just needed their voices amplified.