#evapillar

Could it help to think about wheelchair movement like bicycle movement? People don't expect bikers to stop on a dime, and your diagrams remind me a lot of trying to bike on bad sidewalks.

Do you have experience being in a wheelchair pushed by someone else? If so, how different is the handling/movement from controlling the wheelchair yourself?

May I share your post with the hospital where I work? I train the volunteers who push wheelchairs for discharging patients and this would be a fantastic resource. Your explanations are MUCH better than the training materials we have!!

I know that pushing someone in a big heavy hospital wheelchair with IV and oxygen mounts is very different from using your own custom wheelchair, and you wrote your post for pedestrians, but I want to do whatever I can to improve our patients' comfort (and knock some sense into the hapless teenagers I train).

Hiya! Thank you and you’re very welcome! And I’m happy to, no such thing as a dumb question.

1) I think the bicycle comparison is not bad, but also not perfect. I think it would be fine to say,

“remember that wheelchairs have wheels, so wheelchair users have to choose paths similarly to someone riding a bicycle. But also, wheelchairs are significantly more laborious to control, and a wheelchair user needs you to give way for them, not the other way around like a cyclist.”

2) Yes, I do! It’s so different that I honestly dislike it. I could probably write a whole post on how to respectfully and attentively push someone in a wheelchair, and maybe I will later, but for now I do have a few bullet points for you.

The handling is very different. Being pushed in a wheelchair by someone who has never used one themself is a little bit chaotic because there’s no telling how tight they’re gonna take a turn, or how high they’re gonna pop the front wheels to get you over an obstacle, etc. When I’m self-propelling I can anticipate my own movements so it’s entirely comfortable, whereas there’s some inherent jostling and uncomfortable vibration to being pushed. Honestly if you just choose what path to take like I describe in the post that would be a massive improvement over most people’s pushing skills.

In my personal experience, my wheelchair is a device that enables me to be independent. Needing to be pushed for a stretch of time can feel vulnerable and like the universe is trying to disenfranchise me.

For this reason, it is very important when you’re pushing someone’s wheelchair to remember that your job is not to get them from point A to point B. Your job is to be their legs from point A to point B. If grandma in her hospital chair wants to stop to get a closer look at those flowers, you stop to let grandma look at the flowers. If your patient forgot something in his hospital room and wants to go back, you take him back even if it’ll make you late. To do otherwise is to treat them like freight.

3) You can absolutely do that! I’ve seen some of those informative materials and I think it’s pretty easy to tell they were made with the exclusive goal of preventing the chair from tipping, which is a worthy goal but kind of a low bar imo. Especially for someone just being discharged from the hospital, getting jostled about can be painful! I’m so glad my post can help in this way.