Page 20 - Mobility Management, August/September 2020

ATP Series
IT’S AN IRONY OF COMPLEX REHAB TECHNOLOGY (CRT): Seating team members who give their all to create a functional seating and mobility system must also ensure the client can leave that system safely and efficiently.
“It’s obviously a very relevant subject,” said Brad Peterson, VP of U.S. Sales for Amylior. “People should be transferring at least two times a day, and studies have found that some folks are transferring 15 to 20 times
a day. Obviously, not all of those transfers are to and from bed. There’s bed, there are commodes and tubs, there are work surfaces and multiple environments. So any time you look at transfers, you should be looking at more than just one surface and more than just one place.”
Unique Techniques Required
“Everybody’s different,” Peterson said regarding clients’ transfer-related abilities, strengths and preferences.
Catherine Sweeney, PT, ATP/SMS, Regional Clinical Education Manager for Permobil, has spent most of her 30-year career in acute rehab, “which is where my passion for wheelchair seating began. That’s where the deep dive of all the details that go into making transfers successful happened.”
Sweeney learned that if people who use wheelchairs aren’t set up with the optimal equipment or aren’t taught how to transfer safely, they will transfer nonetheless... sometimes, dangerously.
“They end up compensating,” Sweeney said. “In some way, shape or form, they’ll get to that surface, hopefully. But the compensation is that they’re overpulling, they’re extending their arms to the point that they’re in a vulnerable position, and then their wrists are pulling their body weight.”
She added that poor transfers can have devastating results, including falls and other injuries: “Especially when a device isn’t configured with transfers in mind: You can get your feet tangled in a legrest that doesn’t
The Technique of the Transfer
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NOW YOUR CLIENT NEEDS TO GET OUT
By Laurie Watanabe
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18 AUGUST-SEPTEMBER2020|MOBILITYMANAGEMENT
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