Page 15 - Mobility Management, May/June 2022

THE FUTURE FOR ULTRALIGHTS
Asked what she’d like the future of ultralight chairs to be like, Hamstra mentioned the freedom of riders to have more choices.
“Consumers and users are much more savvy than they were even five years ago,” she noted. “They talk to other users. There are chat groups, Facebook groups, TikTok groups, and users know what they want. They’re not going to be very satisfied hearing, ‘This is all your insurance is going to cover.’ Working with Unite for CRT and doing the [Washington, D.C.] fly-in and those types of things are going to help make the technology more available to the consumer, without them having to pay $5,000 up front if they want a titanium or a carbon fiber frame.”
She would also like riders to be able to match their chair to different activities. “I believe everyone should have at least two chairs,” she said. “Having to have one chair to fit every activity 24/7 for five-plus years is absolutely ludicrous. It doesn’t work. It’s one of the reasons that people’s shoulders are wearing out and maybe they have to go into a power chair.”
Hamstra recalled meeting a young woman at an Abilities Expo last year: “She was in a chair that was probably 2" to 3" inches too wide. It was a rigid chair, and it hadn’t been fit by an ATP. She had Ehlers-Danos syndrome.
“Ian Denison [a physiotherapist and researcher at the
University of British Columbia] says that for every inch [of seat width] that you have beyond what you need, you can decrease propulsion efficiency by up to 10 percent. So she was decreasing her propulsion efficiency by 20 to 30 percent. We got her into this smaller chair, and it was so much better.”
The young woman’s original chair featured 3" light-up casters, even though Hamstra learned the woman didn’t pop wheelies or need casters that size. But when Hamstra started configuring the chair, the woman asked for those light-up wheels.
Hamstra countered: “‘But you just told me that it was better with these 5" wheels.’ She said, ‘Christie, if I don’t have those light-up wheels, people don’t notice me, and people don’t talk to me.’ I was so humbled by that.”
That conversation changed how Hamstra interacts with clients. “Every time I teach clinicians, I say, ‘You have all the book knowledge, you have all the technical knowledge of an ATP, but none of us have that experience of being in the chair. So if we do not listen to what they want and why, we might just be writing them off. Like, ‘That’s dumb, you don’t need that, it’s not going
to work for you.’ But that girl said, ‘Christie, if I don’t have those, people don’t talk to me. They don’t see me.’
“So I found aftermarket 5" light-up casters. It really does have to be hugely client centered in every bit of it.”
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MOBILITY MANAGEMENT | MAY-JUNE 2022 15 3/11/22 12:24 PM
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