Reply To: At What Point Does "Personal Preference" Supersede "Proper Fit"?

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I like to believe that most clinicians would say that they all want what’s best for our patients.
However we can’t say that, sometimes, a compromise is needed to establish the base grounds to be able to help the user grow. Sometimes, due to their long habits, its hard to explain to them why they should change certain aspects of their behaviour, so in these cases I always try to explain to them all the possible results of each option, and then we build from there. I ask them for something small, and once they’ve achieved it, I move on to another level. We’re talking possibly about users that have long fixed habits, and these habits can’t be changed overnight.

However i also ask myself. If i was advising a patient with a respiratory malfunction and he needed a respirator, i would advise and prescribe the best suited respirator for that case. However if my client said to me that he wants the other model, which is not suited for him just because he likes “the sweetish smell of the oxygen” that comes from that other product, i would be totally against that prescription.

So, where do we draw the line? Isn’t a wheelchair a Medical Device? Should it not be used correctly by the user? Should we keep compromising just to make them feel more comfortable? Is it un-ethical to take away the freedom of choice from the user and reduce their “perceived” comfort?