Power Mobility Driving Training for Seniors: A Pilot Study

Abstract

This article describes two power mobility training protocols used with seniors and compares posttraining driving performance. Twelve users of power mobility were consecutively recruited from two residential facilities in Toronto, Canada. The aim of training at both sites was to make clients comfortable with and safe at driving power mobility devices. The content of training was similar, but training protocols differed significantly in terms of the number of sessions (means of 3.43 vs. 9.80; p Յ .05) and the time frame over which the sessions were offered (means of 1.57 vs. 5.10 weeks; p Յ .01). Participants at the two sites differed significantly in terms of overall driving performance (p Յ .05), gender (p Յ .01), and type of device used (p Յ .05). Overall, driving performance was significantly associated with facility, gender, type of device used, and training duration (p Յ .05). When these variables were entered into an exploratory hierarchical regression, facility accounted for 64% of the variance in driving performance. When facility was controlled for, the correlations between device and duration of training with driving performance were no longer significant. The determinants of driving performance are difficult to clearly specify as the variable facility encompasses gender as well as all other differences between the two training protocols. Nevertheless, these data provide direction for future research in this area.

Usability testing of multimodal feedback interface and simulated collision-avoidance power wheelchair for long-term-care home residents with cognitive impairments

“…In this protocol, we recognized that tailoring the driving training to the resident was essential, so we did not plan all sessions in advance but used the resident's self-identified mobility goals and items from the PIDA as a guide for training activities. We also recognized that for some residents, learning to use a power mobility device may take several months [45], so we did not plan to train until their skills reached a plateau.…”

“…We calculated total percentage score by summing all the scored items and dividing by four times the number of items scored. The PIDA has been used clinically and has been described in a study that examined two driving training protocols for older adults living in institutions [45].…”

Motorized mobility scooters: the use of training/intervention and technology for improving driving skills in aging adults – a mini review

“…Among these, four studies (67%) contained training approaches for MMS drivers [14,[23][24][25][26][27], one study (16.5%) involved infrastructural assessment [26], and one study (16.5%) used mobility assistive tools to improve driving skills/performance [27]. Among selected studies only two (33%) used control groups to demonstrate the benefit of intervention [14,24], and only one study utilized a randomized approach for assigning participants to control or experimental groups [24].…”

“…At this point, the search was further defined by specifying only those articles that addressed actual training/interventions and included inclusion criteria based on the entire manuscript, which led to the exclusion of another 18 articles. Six articles were considered to warrant full review, meeting the inclusion criteria, as outlined above [14,[23][24][25][26][27] (Figure 1). When the searches were rerun as previously and when the term "golf cart*" was added, an additional 269 potential articles were identified as potentially relevant.…”

Effectiveness of a Wheelchair Skills Training Program for Powered Wheelchair Users: A Randomized Controlled Trial

“…52 The value of wheelchair skills training with respect to increased capacity has been well documented for manual wheelchair use. [53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62] There has also been some published work on powered wheelchair training, [63][64][65][66][67] although the sample sizes have been small.…”