Disclosures: Courtney L. Gilbert, MD: No financial relationships or conflicts of interest
Objective: To identify the effect of an educational interactive wheelchair program on medical students’ understanding of wheelchair use and its impact on wheelchair users.
Design: Repeated-measures survey study Setting : Inpatient acute rehabilitation center Participants : Sixty 4th year medical students on a mandatory Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation clerkship.
Interventions: All participants underwent an educational wheelchair program consisting of: 1) a disability lecture; 2) a video on the importance of a proper wheelchair fit, as well as recreational wheelchair use; and 3) an interactive wheelchair experience in which students completed a manual wheelchair skills course.
Main Outcome Measures: Pre-survey and post-survey Likert-scale questions measured medical students’ understanding of 4 main areas: impact of manual wheelchair use, challenges of manual wheelchair use, manual wheelchair skills, and wheelchair etiquette.
Results: A two-tailed sign test demonstrated a highly significant increase from pre-survey to post-survey scores in each survey section (p < 0.001). The average pre-survey and post-survey scores for “impact of manual wheelchair use”, “challenges of manual wheelchair use”, “manual wheelchair skills”, and “wheelchair etiquette” survey sections were 3.9 and 4.4, 3.2 and 4.4, 2.4 and 4.4, and 2.6 and 4.1, respectively. Conclusions: An educational wheelchair program effectively increases medical students’ understanding of manual wheelchair use. The interactive wheelchair experience component of the program may be especially effective given that the greatest average score increase was in the manual wheelchair skills section. We recommend the addition of an educational interactive wheelchair program to medical student curriculums in hopes of improving medical students’ understanding of manual wheelchair use and its impact on users.
Level of Evidence: Level IV
To cite this abstract in AMA style:
Gilbert CL, Hsieh S, Dyson-Hudson TA, Donovan J, Cabarle ME, Granger S, Kirshblum S. Effect of an Interventional Educational Wheelchair Program on Medical Students’ Understanding of Manual Wheelchair Use [abstract]. PM R. 2020; 12(S1)(suppl 1). https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/effect-of-an-interventional-educational-wheelchair-program-on-medical-students-understanding-of-manual-wheelchair-use/. Accessed May 15, 2025.« Back to AAPM&R Annual Assembly 2020
PM&R Meeting Abstracts - https://pmrjabstracts.org/abstract/effect-of-an-interventional-educational-wheelchair-program-on-medical-students-understanding-of-manual-wheelchair-use/