Karen gaining confidence with powered mobility
Karen is busy making plans to get out-and-about in the community after transitioning to a powered wheelchair with the support of Occupational Therapy (OT) at Yooralla.
Karen, a resident at Yooralla’s accommodation services, has the NDIS goal “…to improve my health and wellbeing, especially my mobility”.
After it was found that Karen’s manual wheelchair was no longer meeting her needs, Yooralla’s OT team begun planning for Karen’s transition to a new powered wheelchair.
Transitioning to a power wheelchair means Karen will be able to experience many more community activities that weren’t possible for her while using a manual wheelchair, like going to the zoo.
Kirsten Everett, an OT at Yooralla, has been working with Karen to support the transition.
“Our OT goals were for Karen to tolerate a seated positioning in her wheelchair for two hours without experiencing pain and to address some key postural concerns in her seating,” said Kirsten.
“[To achieve this] we completed a seating assessment, including pressure mapping and developing some specific goals for Karen’s posture and seating in a new wheelchair.”
“We decided to trial a powered wheelchair to replace the manual wheelchair with the addition of new complex seating [to make Karen as comfortable as possible],” said Kirsten.
Karen has taken to power mobility like a duck to water, adapting very quickly to the change.
When it comes to driving the chair, like many of us, she’s challenged by reversing and tight corners – but is making great gains in her driving ability and confidence.
“Most importantly, Karen’s pain and seating tolerance have improved dramatically since the trial of the powered wheelchair,” said Kirsten.
Karen agrees, saying the “best thing about the chair is how comfortable it is!”.
“It also gives Karen much more independence and choice,” said Elena, Karen’s service manager.
“Karen’s now eagerly awaiting the delivery of her ‘forever’ powered wheelchair - in hot pink of course!” said Kirsten.
World Occupational Therapy Day
This year World Occupational Therapy Day on 27 October celebrates the theme ‘Unity through Community’. The theme promotes the role of OTs in working together and supporting people to engage with and participate in their community – in whichever way is meaningful to them.
World Occupational Therapy Day is an opportunity to demonstrate the many ways OTs can support people at all stages of life.
Celebrating “truly amazing” support from Yooralla’s OTs
Read more about how Toby* has achieved his goals of successfully transitioning to kinder and then school, as well as increasing independence in self-care skills, thanks to support from his family and OT at Yooralla.
Interested in Occupational Therapy services?
Yooralla’s experienced OTs support people with disability of all ages, stages and needs to meet their individual goals and enhance their quality of life.
OTs support clients to enhance movement and mobility, providing advice on home modifications and equipment, enabling people to engage in everyday activities and to develop social and daily living skills, and much more.
Our OTs specialise in working with people with complex needs, particularly with seating and pressure care. We can provide comprehensive assessments and individual interventions to assist people to develop particular skills.