RERC: Wheeled Mobility in Everyday Life
PI: Stephen Sprigle, PhD, PT

The work of Dr. Sprigle's RUA began with the RUSH project's first RUA, which ran from February 2005 through January 2007. This earlier RUA funded the work of Laura Cohen, PT, PhD, ATP of the Rehabilitation Engineering Research Center (RERC): Wheeled Mobility in Everyday Life at the Shepherd Center in Atlanta, GA. Her study measured the effect of a traditional continuing education program for clinicians entitled "Research Cliff Notes: Bringing Manual Wheelchair Research and Practice to Your Clinic." This project examined clinician knowledge, attitudes and practice behaviors before and after the training intervention.

Dr. Cohen gives an overview of how she designed this research utilization activity in her proposal for the first RUA. This RUA's final report and its appendices detail the findings.

Some of the outcomes from Dr. Cohen's work were presented at the 23rd International Seating Symposium, held March 8 - 10, 2007, in Orlando, FL, in a short course, "Effect of an educational research dissemination program on practice patterns for professionals recommending manual wheelchairs." She shared with RUSH a copy of the conference proceedings and PowerPoint slides from this presentation.

In February 2007, the RUSH project awarded Dr. Sprigle a RUA to compare the results of the face-to-face workshop to one that delivers the same content via a Web-based platform. He collaborates closely with Dr. Cohen. View the proposal for the follow-up RUA, the first update on project activity, and second update. In the third update, Sprigle and Cohen present demographic data related to the 39 participants in the web-based training, and present preliminary results of their pre and post-test.