A Telerehabilitation Pilot Study: Videoconferencing and Wheelchair Positioning in a Bilingual Context.

Abstract

This was a 4 month pilot project to obtain data based on the experiences of 6 multi-impaired anglophone older adults who underwent up to 3 sessions of simple wheelchair positioning and on the experiences of 4 clinicians (2 bilingual specialists from the host site and 2 French speaking Occupational Therapists from the remote site). There were 3 aspects of videoconferencing that were evaluated (1) quality of the work carried out, (2) satisfaction with the process and outcomes as evaluated by clients and (3) by rehabilitation clinicians. In general, both host and remote clinicians were pleased with videoconferencing. Nevertheless, there were minor equipment malfunctions on 29% of videoconferencing sessions. An extensive set of recommendations to deal with these issues is provided.