One average guy's growing awareness of the various mobility aids being used by individuals in the community.

It has been almost ten years now since I first began working in Community Healthcare, and it recently dawned on me just how much I have come to learn about the various issues that the people I work with have to deal with on a daily basis. When I first started working as a Resident Care Aid I didn't really know that much about how people deal with disabilities on a daily basis in their communities, except for whatever had been taught to me during classes by my instructors. To be honest though, it is one thing to be told what matters to a disabled individual and another to actually get a first hand view of what really matters to someone living in your community, to gain an appreciation of what their day to day challenges really are. Before working in community care I couldn't have told you much of anything about what a personal mobility aid was much less any of the significant differences between them.

Before going into healthcare, I knew what a motorized wheelchair was but wasn't really sure what was meant by the term power chair or what was the difference between an electric wheelchair running on a system of gears as opposed to a system of belts; I had seen personal mobility scooters being used by disabled individuals and the elderly but at the same time if you asked me what a medical mobility scooter was and who it was best suited for, I wouldn't really have a clue.

Moving even more into the home, I did not have any awareness of the existence of such mobility aids as lift chairs, and even though I had already had a limited exposure to such mobility devices as stair chair lifts before, I didn't appreciate the more subtle differences that exist between the different makes and models of such devices. With subsequent hubs, I would like to take the opportunity to in a sense codify those things - those tidbits of practical knowlege that I have picked up over time, so that anyone else out there with a sense of curiosity towards such matters might also learn something new.