What to prepare before a parent's hip or knee replacement

When a parent schedules a hip or knee replacement, most of the information they are handed is written for them: how to prepare their body, what the surgery involves, what recovery will feel like. But if you are the adult child who will be picking them up, sleeping over the first few nights, or driving to every therapy appointment, you have a different job. You are the one who has to make sure the house is actually ready and that someone is available on each of the days that matter. That preparation happens in the weeks before surgery, and it is largely invisible in the patient-facing materials.

This guide is for that role. It walks through the home modifications to make before the surgery date, the equipment to have on hand, what to stock in the house, and how to build a realistic help schedule so your parent is not left alone before they can safely manage. Doing this ahead of time is not overkill. It is the difference between a calm homecoming and a scramble on discharge day, when you may get only a few hours' notice that your parent is being sent home.

This article is educational and is not medical advice. Always follow the instructions you receive from your parent's clinicians and physical therapists. If anything here conflicts with their guidance, follow their instructions — they will assess your parent's specific surgery, precautions, and home, and their plan takes priority over any general checklist.

Why the preparation window matters

Joint replacement recovery increasingly starts at home the same day or within a night or two of surgery. That is a good thing clinically, but it compresses the window families have to get ready. The care team's focus is the operation and the immediate medical recovery; the home setup is largely left to the family to arrange in advance. The American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons' patient resource on total hip replacement is a useful primer on the surgery itself, and it makes clear how much of the early recovery depends on a safe, prepared home environment.

The most useful thing you can do is separate the work into two tracks and start both early: making the physical space safe, and lining up the human help. Neither can be improvised well on discharge day.

A note before you buy anything: ask the surgical team or the physical therapist what they recommend, and whether any equipment is being prescribed or delivered for you. Some items may be covered or arranged through the hospital or a home health agency, and hip replacement in particular often comes with specific movement precautions that change which equipment matters most. Confirming first prevents you from buying the wrong thing or duplicating what is already on the way.

Home modifications to make before the surgery date

The goal is a home where your parent can move safely with a walker, get to the bathroom without climbing stairs, sit and stand without straining the new joint, and not trip on anything. Walk through the house the way your parent will actually move through it — front door to bedroom to bathroom to kitchen to the chair they sit in most — and fix the hazards along that path first.

Use the checklist below as your working list. Not every item applies to every home; check off what is relevant and note what still needs doing.

| Area | Preparation task | Done? | |------|------------------|-------| | Whole-home paths | Remove throw rugs, cords, and clutter from walkways; make sure a walker fits through | ☐ | | Whole-home paths | Add nightlights or motion lights on the route to the bathroom | ☐ | | Bathroom | Install grab bars by the toilet and in the shower or tub (secured to studs, not suction-only) | ☐ | | Bathroom | Add a raised toilet seat or a bedside commode | ☐ | | Bathroom | Set up a shower chair or bench and a handheld shower head if possible | ☐ | | Bathroom | Put a non-slip mat in the tub or shower | ☐ | | Bedroom | Consider moving the bed to the ground floor to avoid stairs early on | ☐ | | Bedroom | Make sure the bed height lets your parent sit with feet flat and stand easily | ☐ | | Living area | Choose a firm chair with armrests and a stable seat for daytime rest | ☐ | | Living area | Clear a path wide enough for a walker between the chair, bathroom, and kitchen | ☐ | | Kitchen | Move everyday dishes, food, and medications to counter height (no bending or reaching) | ☐ | | Stairs | Confirm handrails are secure on both sides if stairs cannot be avoided | ☐ | | Entry | Check the path from the car to the door for steps, thresholds, and uneven ground | ☐ |

The single most impactful move for many families is relocating sleeping, bathroom, and living space to one floor. Stairs are not forbidden after joint replacement — many people learn to manage them with therapy — but reducing the number of daily stair trips lowers fall risk and fatigue in the weeks when your parent is weakest. Falls are the specific outcome you are trying to prevent; the CDC's guidance on preventing falls and hip fractures covers the home-hazard removal that matters most, and it applies just as much to a post-surgical parent as to fall prevention in general.

Equipment to have on hand

Have the equipment set up and tested before surgery, not sitting in boxes. A short list covers most needs:

• Walker (the type will be specified by the team; many start with a standard or front-wheeled walker)
• Raised toilet seat or bedside commode
• Grab bars in the bathroom
• Shower chair or bench plus a non-slip mat
• Long-handled reacher or grabber — especially important for hip replacement, where bending is restricted
• Long-handled shoehorn and a sock aid, if hip precautions limit reaching the feet
• Firm chair with armrests for sitting and standing safely

Again, confirm the list with the surgical team or physical therapist. Hip and knee replacements differ: hip replacement frequently comes with precautions about how far the hip can bend, which is why a raised seat, a reacher, and dressing aids matter more; knee replacement recovery leans heavily on regaining the ability to bend and straighten the knee, so the emphasis shifts toward mobility and exercise support. If you want the caregiver's-eye view of how the two recoveries differ once your parent is home, see the family caregiver guide to hip replacement recovery and the family caregiver guide to knee replacement recovery.

What to stock in the house

Before surgery, stock the house so no one has to run errands during the first fragile week:

• Medications: Fill prescriptions in advance where possible, including any pain medication and, if prescribed, a blood thinner or clot-prevention medication. Note that some existing medications may need to be paused before surgery — confirm the timing with the surgical team.
• Easy meals: Prepare or buy meals that need little standing to make. Single-portion items and things reachable from counter height are ideal.
• Ice or cold packs: Swelling control is a big part of early recovery, especially for knees. Have several packs ready so one is always cold.
• Loose, comfortable clothing: Elastic waistbands and slip-on or easy-fasten shoes reduce the strain of dressing.
• A phone and charger within reach of the bed and the main chair, so your parent can call for help without getting up.
• A simple log or notebook to track pain levels, medications given, and how exercises went — this is genuinely useful at follow-up appointments. A ready-made caregiver daily log template for families gives you a structure to bring along.

Arranging the help schedule

The house being ready is only half the job. The other half is making sure a person is present when your parent cannot yet be alone. This is where families most often assume it will "work itself out" and then find themselves scrambling.

Build the schedule before surgery. Work backward from the likely discharge and map out who covers which days and nights for the first one to two weeks, when help is most intensive. Be concrete:

• Discharge day: Who picks your parent up, and who is home when they arrive? Plan for the pickup time to be uncertain.
• First nights: Decide whether someone sleeps over, and who. The first several nights are usually when supervision matters most.
• Daytime coverage: Meals, medication reminders, help to the bathroom, and encouragement with prescribed exercises.
• Transportation: Your parent cannot drive for a while. Map out who drives to physical therapy and follow-up appointments, which come frequently early on.
• Backup: Name who steps in if the primary helper is sick or has a conflict. A single-point-of-failure schedule tends to break in week one.

If siblings or other relatives are involved, a shared plan prevents both gaps and doubled-up effort. Writing down who does what — rather than leaving it to memory or repeated group texts — is exactly the kind of coordination that keeps the early weeks from falling apart. Assembling all of this into one organized plan before the surgery date is the whole point of preparing early.

Common mistakes to avoid

• Waiting until discharge day to buy equipment. You may get only a few hours' notice. Have everything set up before surgery.
• Preparing only the bathroom. The tripping hazards on the path between rooms cause as many problems as the bathroom does. Clear the whole route.
• Buying equipment without asking. Some items may be prescribed, covered, or already being delivered. Confirm the list first to avoid waste and mismatches.
• Underestimating the first nights. Families often plan for daytime help and forget that nights are when a confused or unsteady parent is most at risk. Decide who sleeps over in advance.
• Ignoring stairs until it's a crisis. Decide before surgery whether the bedroom moves downstairs, rather than discovering on night one that your parent cannot climb the stairs.
• Forgetting the recovery is a marathon. The intensive help of the first two weeks eases, but therapy and monitoring continue. Once your parent is home, the family caregiver guide to hip replacement recovery covers what week-by-week support looks like.

Related planning steps

• Caring for a parent at home after hip replacement: a family caregiver guide — what the daily support looks like once your parent is home
• Caring for a parent at home after knee replacement: a family caregiver guide — how knee recovery differs from hip recovery
• Caregiver daily log template for families — a structure for tracking pain, medications, and exercises to bring to appointments