Abstract
Wheelchair skills training has positive mobility and participation outcomes for older adult, adult, and pediatric wheelchair users. Unfortunately, the majority of clinicians within Canada do no report delivering wheelchair skills training to their clients due to a lack of time and resources. One solution to increase delivery of wheelchair skills training is to extend training delivery into community physical activity settings. As no literature on the use of wheelchair skills training in community physical activity programs currently exists, this study discovered what professionals in the community know about wheelchair skills training and how they would best learn more about it.
Community-based physical activity professionals (n=6) from different community organizations (n=4) were interviewed on their knowledge of wheelchair skills training. Interviews were semi-structured and guided by the Quality Participation (QP) and COM-B frameworks. Data was hand-transcribed and analyzed by the researcher using an abductive reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) approach.
Four major themes were identified reflecting two topics. The themes that addressed wheelchair skills training were: (1) lack of awareness/knowledge and (2) desire to learn more. The themes that addressed professional practice were: (3) skills application/potential and (4) alignment with QP building blocks.
While community-based sport and recreation professionals were not familiar with wheelchair skills training, they were receptive to learning more to increase the inclusivity of their current programs. Next steps involve interviewing community-dwelling wheelchair users to gather their perspectives on wheelchair skills training in the community, and to design and pilot a training resource based on the combined data collected.
Recommended Citation
Smith, Jenna; Arbour-Nicitopoulos, Kelly; Best, Krista; and Stirling, Ashley, "Increasing inclusivity for wheelchair users: Scaling up clinical-based wheelchair skills training into community sport and recreation programming." (2025). International Symposium of Adapted Physical Activity and International Symposium on Physical Activity and Visual Impairment and Deafblindness. 20.
https://sword.cit.ie/isapa/2025/day4/20
Increasing inclusivity for wheelchair users: Scaling up clinical-based wheelchair skills training into community sport and recreation programming.
Wheelchair skills training has positive mobility and participation outcomes for older adult, adult, and pediatric wheelchair users. Unfortunately, the majority of clinicians within Canada do no report delivering wheelchair skills training to their clients due to a lack of time and resources. One solution to increase delivery of wheelchair skills training is to extend training delivery into community physical activity settings. As no literature on the use of wheelchair skills training in community physical activity programs currently exists, this study discovered what professionals in the community know about wheelchair skills training and how they would best learn more about it.
Community-based physical activity professionals (n=6) from different community organizations (n=4) were interviewed on their knowledge of wheelchair skills training. Interviews were semi-structured and guided by the Quality Participation (QP) and COM-B frameworks. Data was hand-transcribed and analyzed by the researcher using an abductive reflexive thematic analysis (RTA) approach.
Four major themes were identified reflecting two topics. The themes that addressed wheelchair skills training were: (1) lack of awareness/knowledge and (2) desire to learn more. The themes that addressed professional practice were: (3) skills application/potential and (4) alignment with QP building blocks.
While community-based sport and recreation professionals were not familiar with wheelchair skills training, they were receptive to learning more to increase the inclusivity of their current programs. Next steps involve interviewing community-dwelling wheelchair users to gather their perspectives on wheelchair skills training in the community, and to design and pilot a training resource based on the combined data collected.