Abstract
Objective
To assess the effectiveness of group wheelchair maintenance training and investigate
participant characteristics associated with responsiveness to training.
Design
Randomized controlled trial with an immediate group and a waitlist control group (WLCG)
who received the intervention after a 6-month delay.
Setting
Four Spinal Cord Injury Model Systems Centers.
Participants
Manual (MWC; n=80) and power wheelchair (PWC; n=67) users with spinal cord injury
(N=147).
Interventions
Two 90-minute structured wheelchair maintenance training program classes with 12-20
people per class and separate classes for MWC and PWC users. Each class included in-person
hands-on demonstrations and practice of wheelchair maintenance.
Main Outcome Measures
Separate analysis was completed for MWC and PWC users using the Wheelchair Maintenance
Training Questionnaire (WMT-Q) capacity (ability to complete), performance (frequency
of completion) and knowledge at baseline, 1 month, 6 months, 6 months pretraining
(WLCG only), and 1 year (immediate only).
Results
After the intervention, participants in both the immediate and WLCG improved in maintenance
capacity (MWC and PWC, P<.001) and performance (MWC and PWC, P<.001) with training. Only PWC users improved knowledge of wheelchair maintenance
(P<.001). For both WLCGs (MWC and PWC), there was no difference between the 6-month
pretraining time point and baseline. MWC users who responded to training had lower
WMT-Q scores for all domains, whereas this was only the case for knowledge for PWC
users.
Conclusions
Group wheelchair skills training is effective at improving capacity to complete maintenance
and performance of maintenance activities for MWC and PWC users, even in a cohort
of experienced wheelchair users. For MWC users, improvements were tied to lower WMT-Q
scores at baseline, whereas PWC users improved in capacity and performance independent
of baseline score. Delivering this training in a structured group format has a lower
cost, which might improve adoption into clinical practice.
Keywords
List of abbreviations:
CI (confidence interval), MWC (manual wheelchair), PWC (power wheelchair), SCI (spinal cord injury), WLCG (wait list control group), WMT-Q (Wheelchair Maintenance Training Questionnaire)To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
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Article info
Publication history
Published online: June 23, 2021
Accepted:
February 12,
2021
Received in revised form:
January 14,
2021
Received:
October 26,
2020
Footnotes
This work was supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL) National Institute on Disability, Independent Living and Rehabilitation Research (NIDILRR) (grant no. 90DP0025) and the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) (grant no. K23HD096134).
Clinical Trial Registration No.: NCT01807728,
Disclosures: none.
Identification
Copyright
© 2021 The American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
