Awareness of early rehabilitation amongst the Spinal cord injury patients

Challenge Statement:

Awareness of early rehabilitation amongst the Spinal cord injury patients

Solution

People with spinal cord injuries are often unaware of the rehabilitation and by the time they get to know about the rehabilitation they are already in terrible shape and completely dependent on their family members or helpers. This leads to a dejected and demotivated lifestyle for the patient. So by conducting awareness through rehabilitation conference and meetups in different regions for people suffering from Spinal Cord Injury (SCI) where newly injured patients meet peer mentors and take guidance on how they can have a good quality, independent and self-motivated lifestyle. This process can eventually lead to a strong social network and awareness about the rehabilitation can be spread swiftly with the increasing number of peer mentors. Here they can also interact with a physiotherapist and get the solutions to their day to day problems. Also, people can share their motivating journey of how they have lifted themselves from their injuries and rehabilitated to the present condition.

Storyboard

Prototype

1-day experiment to test the feasibility

a)     What will you do:

Will set up a small rehabilitation workshop in the Chandigarh region where invitations would be sent to the patients living in and around the region to come and gain awareness from a fellow peer mentors on rehabilitation and learn the ways in which they can adopt a healthy and independent lifestyle. Peer mentors will also share how they shed their reclusiveness and fought back with all the shortcomings we have for physically challenged in our country and how they were able to ignore the difference between a normal and a physically challenged individual and what all preparations it took them to be where they are in their lives. The conference will include sessions on wheelchair training, independently carrying out daily chores for a physically challenged person, psychological upliftment by the peers, alternate career advice, one on one counseling session for the newly injured patients.

b)    Hypothesis

1.     There is a low level of awareness of rehabilitation in persons suffering from Spinal Cord Injury.

2.     People with spinal cord injury are willing to step out of their houses and are willing to adopt an independent lifestyle if given proper guidance.

c)     Cost of the experiment:

 The experiment requires a hall where the camp could be conducted. There is an NGO in Chandigarh, Chandigarh Spinal Rehab which has a wheel accessible hall and would be given for no cost and would also be the source for providing volunteers. We can have peer mentors from the region speaking on different aspects of rehabilitation and can be done for no cost. The only cost here is of the food since it is a daylong camp, there must be an arrangement for food and tea for participants. So, the cost of the experiment would be the cost required to serve food to the participants which can around 50-70 per person.

d)    How will you measure the success:

The success can be measured based on the number of participants that came for the conference to the number of participants invited. The conference will be deemed successful if at least 50% or more invitees attend the conference.

The attendees will also be given a feedback form to rate the various sessions that will happen on the course of the day like wheelchair training, Pressure sore management, and peer interaction. Further, they will be asked to rate the conference. The average rating should be above 8 to be successful.

The aim of such conferences is to make people with spinal cord injuries aware about rehabilitation in order to transform their lives and also enable them to explore their potential.