Highlights
- •Caregivers significantly enhance the wheelchair skills capacity and confidence of the power wheelchair users to whom they provide assistance.
- •The nature and benefits of the caregivers' assistance could be summarized in 7 themes, for instance caregiver provides verbal support (eg, by cueing, coaching, or reporting about the environment).
- •These findings have significance for wheelchair skills assessment and training and for the planning of posthospital care.
Abstract
Objective
To test the hypothesis that caregivers enhance the wheelchair skills capacity and
confidence of the power wheelchair users to whom they provide assistance, and to describe
the nature of that assistance.
Design
Multicenter cross-sectional study.
Setting
Rehabilitation centers and communities.
Participants
Participants (N=152) included caregivers (n=76) and wheelchair users (n=76).
Interventions
None.
Main Outcome Measures
Version 4.3 of the Wheelchair Skills Test (WST) and the Wheelchair Skills Test-Questionnaire
(WST-Q). For each of the 30 individual skills, we recorded data about the wheelchair
user alone and in combination (blended) with the caregiver.
Results
The mean total WST capacity scores ± SD for the wheelchair users alone and blended
were 78.1%±9.3% and 92.4%±6.1%, respectively, with a mean difference of 14.3%±8.7%
(P<.0001). The mean WST-Q capacity scores ± SD were 77.0%±10.6% and 93.2%±6.4%, respectively,
with a mean difference of 16.3%±9.8% (P<.0001). The mean WST-Q confidence scores ± SD were 75.5%±12.7% and 92.8%±6.8%, respectively,
with a mean difference of 17.5%±11.7% (P<.0001). The mean differences corresponded to relative improvements of 18.3%, 21.0%,
and 22.9%, respectively. The nature and benefits of the caregivers' assistance could
be summarized in 7 themes (eg, caregiver provides verbal support [cueing, coaching,
reporting about the environment]).
Conclusions
Caregivers significantly enhance the wheelchair skills capacity and confidence of
the power wheelchair users to whom they provide assistance, and they do so in a variety
of ways. These findings have significance for wheelchair skills assessment and training.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
WST (Wheelchair Skills Test), WST-Q (Wheelchair Skills Test-Questionnaire)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: January 03, 2018
Footnotes
Supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research CanWheel team in Wheeled Mobility for Older Adults (no. AMG-100925) for operating funds; and the Fonds de recherche du Québec-Santé for salary support.
Disclosures: none.
Clinical Trial Registration No.: NCT1020645.
Identification
Copyright
© 2017 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine
