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Enabling of the disabled: Becoming aware of mobility aids for the disabled in my community.
Posted on May 19, 2009 09:24:34 PM
It has been just about ten years now since I first began working in Community Healthcare, and it recently dawned on me just how much I have come to discover as regards the diverse issues that the people I work with have to manage each day. After I at the outset started working as a Resident Care Aid I didn’t in truth comprehend that a good deal with reference to how individuals deal with their disabilities each day in their community,excepting what had been taught to me in the course of classes by my instructors. To be honest though, it is one thing to be told what matters to a disabled individual and another to actually get a first hand perspective of what truly matters to somebody living in the community, to get an awareness of what their daily challenges in actual fact are. Prior to my employment in community care I couldn’t have told you much of anything about what a mobility aid would be never mind any of the important differences between them.
Before going into healthcare, I knew what a motorized wheelchair was but wasn’t in fact sure what was intended by the expression power chair or what were the differences between the electric wheelchair operating on a series of gears as opposed to a system of belts; I had seen personal mobility scooters being used by disabled individuals and the elderly but at the same time if you asked me what a medical mobility scooter was and who it was best matched for, I would not in actual fact have any real clue.
Proceding yet further into the household, I did not have any awareness of the existence of such mobility aids as lift chairs, and even though I had already had a limited exposure to such mobility devices as stair chair lifts before, I didn’t appreciate the more slight differences that exist among the diverse makes and models of such devices. With subsequent postings, I would like to take the opportunity to in a sense codify those things – those tid bits of helpful awareness that I have acquired over the years, so that anybody out there with a feeling of inquisitiveness towards such issues may in addition discover something fresh.