Wheelchair skills training for occupational therapy students: comparison of university-course versus "boot-camp" approaches

Objective: To test the hypothesis that occupational therapy students who receive wheelchair skills training education using a distributed-practice university-course approach versus a condensed-practice boot-camp approach results in greater improvements post-intervention in relevant outcomes. Design: A quasi-experimental, nonequivalent control group design. Setting: A university occupational therapy program. Participants: Occupational therapy students (experimental group) and recent occupational therapy graduates (control group) (N = 58). Interventions: A 15-week, 45-hour wheelchair provision course in which a total of 24 hours were dedicated to wheelchair skills testing and training education (experimental group) versus an 8-hour wheelchair skills training boot-camp (control group). Main outcome measures: Assessments were conducted pre- and post-intervention using the Wheelchair Skills Test Questionnaire (WST-Q), Wheelchair Use Confidence Scale for Manual Wheelchair Users (WheelCon) and Self-Efficacy on Assessing, Training and Spotting wheelchair skills (SEATS). Results: Compared to baseline, the WST-Q., WheelCon and SEATS scores improved significantly for both groups (p < .001). There were no significant differences in change scores (post-intervention - baseline values) between the groups for WST-Q, WheelCon or SEATS scores, however, the experimental group demonstrated a trend (p < .051) of higher scores for all outcome measures. Conclusions: Occupational therapy students who received wheelchair skills training using either a distributed-practice university-course or condensed-practice boot-camp approach demonstrated significant post-training improvements in their WST-Q, WheelCon and SEATS scores, but no significant differences were found between groups.