The use and perception of support walkers for children with disabilities: a United Kingdom survey
- PDF / 571,950 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 47 Downloads / 157 Views
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Open Access
The use and perception of support walkers for children with disabilities: a United Kingdom survey Ciaran George1 , Wendy Levin2 and Jennifer M. Ryan1,3,4*
Abstract Background: Support walkers are a type of assistive device that may enable non-ambulant children with disabilities to walk independently and promote improvements in bowel function, bone mineral density (BMD), mobility, independence, participation and social function. However, there is little evidence to support these benefits and there is a lack of research describing the use of support walkers in clinical practice. This study aimed to examine the use of support walkers for children with disabilities in clinical practice. Method: A survey was distributed via professional organisations, charities and schools associated with paediatric disabilities in the UK. Participants were recruited between January and March 2018. Populations of interest were those who prescribe support walkers to children with disabilities and those who work with children who use them. Results: In total, 125 people were included in the analysis; 107 responders prescribed support walkers and 18 responders worked with children who used support walkers. The population of children who use support walkers ranged from 6 months to 18 years and included children with cerebral palsy, chromosomal abnormalities and other medical conditions. Use of these devices was also reported in schools, at home and in the community for varying lengths of time. Numerous perceived benefits were noted, most frequent of which were increases in physical activity and enjoyment. By comparison, fewer perceived problems were identified but centred on lack of space and difficulty with transfers. Conclusions: This study provides insight into the use of support walkers in the UK, particularly surrounding current practices, which may help to improve consistency in clinical settings. Perceived benefits and problems may provide a basis for identification of appropriate outcome measures to monitor effectiveness. These results should also provide a basis for designing future studies to examine effectiveness of support walkers for paediatric disabilities. Keywords: Paediatric, Support walker, Disability Children with disabilities, particularly those with severe motor impairments, participate in less physical activity and exhibit more sedentary behaviour than their typically developing peers [1, 2]. Barriers to participation in * Correspondence: [email protected] 1 College of Health, Medicine and Health Sciences, Brunel University London, London, UK 3 Department of Public Health and Epidemiology, RCSI University of Medicine and Health Sciences, Dublin, Ireland Full list of author information is available at the end of the article
physical activity include stigma, negative attitudes, lack of motor skills and inaccessible environments [3, 4]. Assistive devices are one method used to enable children to overcome these barriers and hence increase physical activity. Handheld walkers are comm
Data Loading...
