Clinical Corner

How do you ensure the features of the wheelchair you prescribe are used to their maximum capacity? Educating wheelchair users and their carers on how to use the features you recommend on their wheelchair has always been a challenging task. This can often lead to the wheelchair not being used to its potential and the user not getting the intended benefit out of the AT to help them reach their functional goals. How do you maximise communication between multiple support persons to ensure items such as pressure can cushions, and slide laterals are properly used? We find as a supplier, handover between therapist to user to family to multiple care staff can offer be difficult for multiple reasons. This breakdown in communication can lead to broken equipment and pressure care aids that are not properly inflated or maintained. The best communication, if it can be managed, is on the wheelchair its self. Here is an example our Clinical Educator, Lauren, provided to care staff earlier this month to educate them on the inflation of the Systam Polyair cushion.