285 research outputs found

    How a Diverse Research Ecosystem Has Generated New Rehabilitation Technologies: Review of NIDILRRā€™s Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers

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    Over 50 million United States citizens (1 in 6 people in the US) have a developmental, acquired, or degenerative disability. The average US citizen can expect to live 20% of his or her life with a disability. Rehabilitation technologies play a major role in improving the quality of life for people with a disability, yet widespread and highly challenging needs remain. Within the US, a major effort aimed at the creation and evaluation of rehabilitation technology has been the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Centers (RERCs) sponsored by the National Institute on Disability, Independent Living, and Rehabilitation Research. As envisioned at their conception by a panel of the National Academy of Science in 1970, these centers were intended to take a ā€œtotal approach to rehabilitationā€, combining medicine, engineering, and related science, to improve the quality of life of individuals with a disability. Here, we review the scope, achievements, and ongoing projects of an unbiased sample of 19 currently active or recently terminated RERCs. Specifically, for each center, we briefly explain the needs it targets, summarize key historical advances, identify emerging innovations, and consider future directions. Our assessment from this review is that the RERC program indeed involves a multidisciplinary approach, with 36 professional fields involved, although 70% of research and development staff are in engineering fields, 23% in clinical fields, and only 7% in basic science fields; significantly, 11% of the professional staff have a disability related to their research. We observe that the RERC program has substantially diversified the scope of its work since the 1970ā€™s, addressing more types of disabilities using more technologies, and, in particular, often now focusing on information technologies. RERC work also now often views users as integrated into an interdependent society through technologies that both people with and without disabilities co-use (such as the internet, wireless communication, and architecture). In addition, RERC research has evolved to view users as able at improving outcomes through learning, exercise, and plasticity (rather than being static), which can be optimally timed. We provide examples of rehabilitation technology innovation produced by the RERCs that illustrate this increasingly diversifying scope and evolving perspective. We conclude by discussing growth opportunities and possible future directions of the RERC program

    Guidelines for guidance programmes for Xhosa parents with children with cerebral palsy : and orthopedagogical perspective

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    This research investigated the need of Xhosa parents with children with cerebral palsy in the Eastern Cape for support through specially designed parent guidance programmes. The research problem that was investigated was: Do Xhosa parents with children with cerebral palsy need guidance programmes, and what guidelines can be given pertaining to such programmes? The aim was to determine whether Xhosa parents needed guidance programmes and if so, to provide guidelines that addressed this need. A literature study was done and thereafter a survey was conducted using a questionnaire with closed items to collect data from 180 Xhosa parents with children with cerebral palsy living in the rural areas of the Eastern Cape's former Transkei. They were sampled by using a non-random (purposive) sampling method. One hundred and two (102) parents (out of the total of 180) answered the questions in the questionnaires and returned them by mail. The same types of questions were used to interview 54 parents. The data was analyzed by a statistical analyst by Microsoft Excel spread sheets. Data was presented in the form of tables and pie charts and the researcher interpreted the outcomes in the light of the literature and her own indigenous knowledge of the Xhosa community. The implications of findings for all Xhosa parents with children with cerebral palsy are that they lack knowledge of issues such as cerebral palsy, inclusive education and how to deal with their children with cerebral palsy. Relationships within the family and the community are affected because of the children's cerebral palsy. Moreover, Xhosa parent guidance programmes are not available in the Eastern Cape or in other provinces in South Africa. As a result, guidelines are provided which may be used for constructing Xhosa parent guidance programmes.Educaional Studies(D.Ed. ( Education Management)

    Corporal diagnostic work and diagnostic spaces: Clinicians' use of space and bodies during diagnosis

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    Ā© 2015 The Authors. Sociology of Health & Illness Ā© 2015 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/John Wiley & Sons Ltd. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.An emerging body of literature in sociology has demonstrated that diagnosis is a useful focal point for understanding the social dimensions of health and illness. This article contributes to this work by drawing attention to the relationship between diagnostic spaces and the way in which clinicians use their own bodies during the diagnostic process. As a case study, we draw upon fieldwork conducted with a multidisciplinary clinical team providing deep brain stimulation (DBS) to treat children with a movement disorder called dystonia. Interviews were conducted with team members and diagnostic examinations were observed. We illustrate that clinicians use communicative body work and verbal communication to transform a material terrain into diagnostic space, and we illustrate how this diagnostic space configures forms of embodied 'sensing-and-acting' within. We argue that a 'diagnosis' can be conceptualised as emerging from an interaction in which space, the clinician-body, and the patient-body (or body-part) mutually configure one another. By conceptualising diagnosis in this way, this article draws attention to the corporal bases of diagnostic power and counters Cartesian-like accounts of clinical work in which the patient-body is objectified by a disembodied medical discourse.The Wellcome Trust (Wellcome Trust Biomedical Strategic Award 086034
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