12 | SCI and Environmental Accessibility

For persons living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) or other types of physical disabilities, accessibility is key to successful community reintegration and vitally important for overall life satisfaction.

Mr. Wun fell asleep while driving without a safey belt, resulting in a serious motor vehicle accident and a spinal cord injury (SCI).

To enable appropriate planning of Mr. Wun's second period of rehabilitation, the rehabilitation team had to gain an accurate picture of his functioning.

With the assessment results in mind, the second part of the Rehab-Cycle^® assessment phase involved identifying the goals and targets to achieve with rehabilitation interventions.

In the Rehab-Cycle^® intervention phase, a range of interventions were undertaken to address the goals set for each of Mr. Wun's intervention targets i.e. the ICF category for which a goal was set and for which interventions were planned.

Although the re-assessment of Mr. Wun’s functioning status at the end of the Rehab-Cycle^® revealed only modest improvements, the goals related to the prevention of secondary conditions and to mobility were achieved.

Accessibility is a broad term encompassing many elements, including physical, socio-cultural and technological aspects. This case study of Mr. Wun highlighted how difficult it is to overcome environmental inaccessibility, despite rehabilitation efforts to increase a person's independence in mobility.

Example of book: Jones M, Rivett D. Introduction to clinical reasoning. In: Jones M, Rivett D. Clinical reasoning for manual therapists. Edinburgh, UK: Butterworth Heinemann. 2004.

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