Hi, I want to talk about wheelchair prescription and given what we have learned so far I think it should be a breeze for you to understand the concept of prescribing the wheelchair for our client. So in short there are two types of a wheelchair available well in general that we have manual chair and then we have power chair within the category of manual wheelchair the standard one is you know what we typically see on the street that you can kind of you know collapse it and then the wheel is larger and there are a couple more different type of manual chair For example, if a person needs to transport themselves a lot, a lightweight wheelchair is more easy for use. Or if this person would like to do some sport, the sport type of wheelchair. needs to be customized because typically it really needs to fit this person's wants and needs and the physical condition.
And for power wheelchair, typically it allows the person to do tilt and play in space. And again, it would need to fit the need, the unique needs of the client. Oftentimes you can also learn about different terms of a wheelchair.
For example, there's one type of attendant propel. So you need someone to push the wheelchair for you. Or you propel the wheelchair yourself.
And then power wheelchair. And then scooter. Scooter is one type of wheelchair. in this category.
So when we as an OT, when we consider a proper design of wheelchair for our client, we need to consider the whole person. So what do they do for ADL and what is the physical condition, psychological condition? and then the societal situation toward a person with a physical dysfunction and can this person afford a specific type of wheelchair okay so we need to consider all these factors and again we need we want when we when we evaluating or a proper design for wheelchair we need we we need you know it's really depending on the needs what they want and what they need to do in for their daily occupation can they afford and maybe if it's more like a high-tech wheelchair you need to decide what interface of the system that attached to the wheelchair would be required would be preferable for this person so again you can kind of appreciate that it's not that simple that we simply look at a wheelchair and it's not that simple if we choose you know a high-tech type of wheelchair for this person because it may not fit the person's needs or you cannot you know this person cannot afford this type of wheelchair just because of the high-tech feature even though it's so good okay so today i want to focus on the person's you know anthropometry so to the wheelchair design or ankle that that's basically applicable for all wheelchair design.
So if you look at a typical or standard wheelchair design, we typically consider several aspects of design. So from the top to the end, you will see the head support. If the person has difficulty controlling the head movement, then we want to give the person a head support.
and where to put the head support is typically at the base of the skull and we will talk about that later and then shoulder region should be support but we don't want to interfere with upper extremity movement even though we want to give proper support so again we will need to consider the need and the person's condition to decide the height of the back support and then maybe we want to give some lateral support our arm rest and then we want to consider the seating position so basically we want to facilitate a neutral sitting position which is 90 90 90 90 for the hip 90 for the hip um i'm sorry 90 for the hip 90 for the knee and then 90 for the ankle so that's 90 90 90 and you know in some situation we want this person to rest so we may want them to tilt backward to have a a short break we don't want to push we don't want this person to kind of fall forward right so does this wheelchair have this feature of you know tilt in space that may we need to consider that and then the um a foot rest the height of the foot rest we need to consider and then because the foot or the feet is in contact with this foot plate then the pressure that we need to consider and not to mention that you know This person is sitting in the wheelchair for a long time every day So the pressure that the body gives to the back and on the seat needs to be carefully calculated and then you know a lot of effort by the rehab engineering scientists has been putting a lot of effort to develop a proper seat system for wheelchair users. So we will learn more about that in the spring about wheelchair selection and seat. selection.