"Wheelchair delivery, set up and demonstration"

The WestMARC Occupational Therapist (OT) who recently came to my husband’s room with a long awaited tilting wheelchair didn’t communicate with me throughout the whole of the visit. Indeed they seemed to want to avoid any contact with me at all - they didn’t even say hello. I experienced their attitude as extreme rudeness and found it deeply unhelpful. They spoke directly to the two student nurses who had simply come to observe, and, apart from conveying an air of complete irritation, they completely ignored me and my husband.

The student nurses will never use this complex chair; I will use it at least as much as any of the care staff, if not more, and yet I was sidelined and ignored throughout and felt that somehow I had deeply offended the OT just by being in the room. I was left not feeling confident that I knew all the workings of the chair, and unsure if it was fully adjusted to suit my husband.

My husband leans heavily to the right, so the OT fitted one side support to counter this and said the additional support wasn’t required and to put it in a cupboard. The headrest didn’t seem to be in any sort of useful position and the leg supports were oddly and asymmetrically positioned, and not actually providing support, but my questions about these things were abruptly dismissed as if they were thoroughly annoying. The whole session (including assembling the chair before bringing it in) took perhaps 20 minutes and was very unpleasant. 

Fortunately for us, another wheelchair specialist came the next day to demonstrate the use of a power pack with a similar chair, ahead of our purchasing of a pack for my husband’s chair. They immediately noticed that his chair wasn’t properly set up and very kindly spent over an hour carefully adjusting various aspects of the chair to ensure it fitted my husband and took time to check in with him that things were comfortable at every stage. They also took care to show me how everything worked along the way. They were very concerned to see that only one side support had been fitted, explaining that both supports are always needed, despite the fact that someone leans one way. Also, the support brackets and the chair arms had been set so high that the supports bit right up into my husband’s armpits and the chair arms hunched his shoulders up - all very uncomfortable. They put this right and also suggested that shoulder straps might be helpful. When they demonstrated the effect to my husband he was delighted, so these have now been ordered. They also set the leg supports and foot plates to the correct position and angle. Basically the wheelchair specialist carried out the WestMARC OT’s job for  them - very fortunately for us.

The two experiences, on successive days, were like night and day. It was glowingly clear that the specialist who came on the second day absolutely loved their job and delighted in making a positive difference to people’s lives. I cannot thank them enough - my husband now has a properly adjusted, safe, comfortable chair, and I fully understand how to use it safely.

WestMARC needs to rethink the way it interacts with clients, clients who are vulnerable and whose quality of life depends heavily on these pieces of equipment, clients who often cannot speak for themselves and need family members to advocate for them. They need to be far more polite and compassionate and take far more care - and somehow find pleasure in their work, rather than displaying only irritation and annoyance.

If we had been able to bear the cost of buying this chair privately we would have done so. However, after this (our one and only) experience of WestMARC, rest assured that if we ever need equipment via WestMARC in the future, we will look to our personal savings to avoid another such encounter (not to mention the months of waiting in the first place!). And we know exactly which specialist company would be our first port of call. Badly done, WestMARC.