Ethics

[Kofo Davies-Otto]

What should a Wheelchair provider do when a patients requires a wheelchair but family are unwilling to accept the wheelchair or see the benefit of the wheelchair because they have been told the child would walk by a church Pastor and you know the child will not walk as a provider

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First you must ask yourself, is it your job, as a provider, to give the information about the users health and needs? Or is their clinician avoiding their responsability?

In my country we see a lot of disabled children going around in “baby strollers” just because their parents are afraid of the “disabled” label. This is the worst that they can do to their child, and we know that. It makes our job a lot harder when they come to us with all the deformities that have developped over several years of neglect. I would love nothing less than helping these children develop correctly and avoid the pain and costs of spine surgeries and what not… So the best we can do is to refer the user to their main clinician and maybe asked them why they are avoiding to explain to the family that the “church pastor” might be wrong..

However everyone has their own right to their own beliefs and its always a tricky topic when children are involved, however i think we all agree that year after year these kinds of cases are lowering and the best we can do is to help raise awareness for pediatric mobility and the benefits of having a wheelchair in an earlier stage of life.

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