Effectiveness of Wheelchair Skills on Physical Activity and Stress Level of Spinal Cord Injured Persons.

Abstract

Introduction: Injury to spinal cord is considered as a severe health condition that causes major damages to the spinal cord and ultimately results into multiple health problems of an individual. Major problems happen to individuals, their families and society as an end result of spinal cord injury (Noonan et al., 2012). Injury to the spinal cord causes various problems and individual suffers a lot through physical, psychological, economical problems. Methodology: Study design was pre experimental. Researcher selected a single group of participants. There was no control group to compare with this single group. Those selected participants received training then again examined after post training. Among the types of pre experimental designs researcher chose one group pre test and post test design. The purpose of the study is to observe the effect of the training. Results: Results of the study suggest that after training of one month wheelchair skills there were no participants in high stress level. Previously there were three participants in high stress level. Number of participants also reduced in moderate stress level. Ten participants were found in moderate stress levels which were previously fifteen in number. Ten participants were found in low stress level. Compared to tetraplegia participants paraplegia participants showed better progress. The paired t test provides t value 6.850, degrees of freedom (df) 19 with p value (p=.000).Therefore the test is statistically significant. As the t value is large than the critical value so null hypothesis is rejected. To compare the mean differences of pre test and post test physical activity t statistics test was performed. T statistics test showed t value of 3.918 with degrees of freedom 19. The t value is larger than the critical value. Thereby null hypothesis is rejected and alternative hypothesis is accepted. Conclusion: It is strongly recommended to perform a randomized controlled trial with a larger sample size. More participation of female participants should be highly recommended. Multicenter set up should be included with follow up. Key words: Spinal cord injury, wheelchair skill test, physical activity, participants, stress level, perceived stress scale, training, wheelchair skills