Why is fitting necessary after a new wheelchair is delivered?

Properly fitting a wheelchair first should start with an evaluation by a PT or an OT doing what we call a “mat evaluation.” And the therapist will get the patient onto a mat and assess their flexibility—how flexible are their legs, their trunk, their arms, and how do we have to set up this chair to put them in the best posture to keep them the most upright, and most stable and functional in the chair?—and so, you should start with a mat evaluation. And then they should be evaluated in different types of wheelchairs, whatever they’re looking at—manual chairs versus power chairs—they should actually try those wheelchairs, and not just a prescribed wheelchair based on what someone thinks would work for them. It’s very important that they actually try that chair, try several chairs, and then have them appropriately fitted to those, and the chair should be ordered—funded hopefully—and then fit to them specifically by a skilled therapist.

So when a wheelchair is prescribed or ordered for someone, the most important thing is to do a fitting with the patient-don't just deliver it to their home and say, "Here it is, and off you go."- we need to adjust the chair appropriately so it's fitting your body correctly and make sure the L of your body is supported appropriately, that you have the best pushes. And then after we fit, we should be checking back in with you to make sure that we did a good job, or you should be communicating back to the person that the wheelchair came from and let them know whether it's working or not. It's also crucial to give feedback on the spot to the therapist if you're not feeling comfortable in the wheelchair, you don't think the fit is right, it's too wide, it's too narrow-give that feedback as soon as you can. And so again, it needs to be that conversation between the person who's prescribing and fitting the wheelchair and the person who is receiving it. And it should hopefully be the same person, or someone who works very closely with the person who prescribed it, so they understand why and how it was prescribed and if something's wrong, they can remediate it and address that issue.