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The purpose of this paper is to establish the outcome of wheelchair prescription procedures for carers supporting a wheelchair user with special reference to their health and well‐being.

A postal questionnaire was used in conjunction with analysis of policy and practice documents in wheelchair prescription and carers' needs.

The majority of carers reported a wide range of health problems. A relationship between wheel chair type and reported carer pain was noted. Only a minority of carers considered that they had received an adequate carer's assessment, and few had received training in wheel chair management; such training where it had been carried out, led to reduced reports of pain.

The study invites more detailed analysis of both the conditions under which wheelchair prescribing takes place and the impact of assessment and training on carers' health. The study is based on a relatively small, local sample and a more extensive study is called for.

Procedures for prescription of wheelchairs should be reviewed and steps taken to ensure that adequate consideration is given to the health needs of carers and the circumstances under which they will push the wheelchair.

More thoughtful prescription of wheelchairs will lead to increased health of carers improving their quality of life and reduce demands on health services and the accompanying risk to their capacity to carry on caring.

The study addresses a neglected topic, which clearly identifies the consequences of inadequate prescription of wheelchairs for the health of carers, a topic generally neglected in the literature.

Wheelchairs and mobility devices are important to enable mobility for students who are unable to functionally walk by themselves to fully participate in daily life. However, they can be enablers or barriers to inclusion and participation for students. Children and adolescents, like other wheelchair users, have a varying number of reasons to use chairs, but what type of chair, how it is used and what type of participation it encourages or discourages is as individual as the child themselves. This is an area of practice that has little evidence on which to base decisions, leading to inconsistencies of provision practice and inclusion in mainstream environments. This chapter will discuss why children use wheelchairs in the first place, then outline some of the typical types of wheelchair available and discuss matching the child to their wheelchair. Barriers to appropriate use of wheelchairs include policy, funding, attitudes and perceived skill set. Children who use wheelchairs often do not gain the motor experiences that their peers do yet are expected to perform skilled wheeled mobility, often without training. Finally, inclusion in school is about inclusion not only in the classroom but also in all activities to do with their school-based communities.

The choice of what type of mobility a child needs is down to their self-defined goals in the context of their school environment, family and general ecosystem. Other forms of wheeled mobility included adaptive bicycles for children who are unable to utilise nonadapted bikes. The basis for assessment for wheeled mobility is the student. The most important part of adaptive seating is to match the student, their self-defined goals and their developmental needs. Barriers to inclusion are discussed. The final section of this chapter includes a discussion of where wheeled mobility is going into the future.

This study aims to increase awareness and educate the reader about health-care fraud targeting seniors in the USA to help stakeholders better understand, recognize and prevent this type of fraud.

This paper collects statistics on the current state of health care frauds committed against seniors, and examines related cases and laws.

The authors find this type of fraud is highly prevalent and expected to increase. Current laws preventing this fraud from occurring are multifold and complex. While prevention strategies through law enforcement have been somewhat successful, a reduction in resources may put seniors at an increased risk in the years to come.

Without additional prevention strategies, the problem will likely escalate with a growing population of older adults. This study encourages further research into effective prevention strategies and methods to fight health-care fraud against seniors.

Health-care fraud and its associated costs pose a significant threat to the society and economy of the USA. Reducing this fraud will not only reduce the costs to the US economy but also improve the physical and mental well-being of senior victims, reduce their mortality and hospitalization rates and improve the public trust placed to health-care providers.

This study highlights how health-care fraud is committed against seniors. With the projected trend of an aging US population, educating stakeholders, increasing awareness and applying tools to protect seniors will be important to reduce the absolute scope of this problem in the future.

Surgical services are settings where resilient performance (RP) is necessary to cope with a wide range of variabilities. Although RP can benefit from a supportive built environment (BE), prior studies have focused on the operating room, giving scant attention to support areas. This study takes a broader perspective, aiming at developing BE design knowledge supportive of RP at the surgical service as a whole.

Seven BE design prescriptions developed in a previous work in the context of internal logistics of hospitals, and thus addressing interactions between workspaces, were used as a point of departure. The prescriptions were used as a data analysis framework in a case study of the surgical service of a medium-sized private hospital. The scope of the study included surgical and support areas, in addition to workflows involving patients and family members, staff, equipment, sterile instruments and materials, supplies, and waste. Data collection included document analysis, observations, interviews, and meetings with hospital staff.

Results identified 60 examples of using the prescriptions, 77% of which were related to areas other than the operating rooms. The developed design knowledge is framed as a set of prescriptions, examples, and their association to workflows and areas, indicating where it should be applied.

The design knowledge is new in surgical services and offers guidance to both BE and logistics designers.

The EPOC neuroheadset is a commercially available device that allows game players to control a computer using their facial expressions or their thoughts. This paper aims to examine whether it has the potential to be used as an input for assistive technology (AT) devices.

Two experiments were conducted. In the first, 12 non‐impaired subjects used the neuroheadset to control a computer with their facial expressions. They also used a simple system of two head switches for comparison. In the second experiment, three non‐impaired subjects were trained to use the neuroheadset to control a computer with their thoughts.

In the first experiment, the neuroheadset was slower and less accurate than the head switches (p<0.05), and was also harder to use. It is unlikely to be preferred to existing methods of accessing AT for those that retain a small amount of head movement. In the second experiment, by the end of the week, all three subjects achieved accuracy rates greater than chance.

All subjects were non‐impaired, and the sample size in the second experiment was small. Further research should concentrate on the second experiment, using larger sample sizes and impaired subjects.

The EPOC neuroheadset is substantially cheaper than similar specialist devices, and has the potential to allow those with no voluntary muscle control to access AT with their thoughts.

The results of these two experiments show that the Emotiv EPOC neuroheadset can be used as an interface for non‐impaired users to transfer information to a computer, which could in turn be used to control AT.

We explore the effects and interplay of physical and social environments on the inaccessibility of gynecological health care for women with spinal cord injury. We also explore women’s responses to the inaccessibility of this care, in hopes of trying to understand better how women navigate their gynecological health and health care when faced with physical and social environmental constraints.

The data for this phenomenological study were gathered using in-depth, qualitative interviews with 20 women living with spinal cord injuries in or around Detroit, Michigan. Each interviewee was questioned about overall health and physical functioning, accessibility of doctor offices, interactions with health care providers, gynecological health-seeking behaviors, and complementary and alternative medicine use. In this paper we report on data on women’s difficulties in securing gynecological health care experiences and related attitudes and practices.

Findings echo past literature about the inaccessibility of doctor’s offices, including the lack of suitable exam tables and medical equipment. Office staff varied in their willingness to help transfer women from wheelchairs to exam tables as well, often creating what we term an inaccessible social environment. Individual women in our sample found different strategies for navigating the environmental contexts of a doctor’s office and the encounters that they had with providers within medical settings. These strategies had varying impacts on individuals’ abilities to secure gynecological health care.

Our findings point to the possibility of an interplay between and intersection of physical and social environments within medical settings that needs to be explored further and, potentially, the primary importance of the social environment over the physical environment in determining whether an individual’s disability makes health care inaccessible.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between health and safety (H&S) and organisational culture in project business, in particular to explore the validity of current cognitive emphases of linear organisational maturity towards a “safety culture”, and normative models and prescriptions.

An interpretative methodology is employed, informed by ethnography (Douglas' cultural theory) and clinical consultative (Schein's model) approaches, using case‐based analysis comprising seven project business organisations.

The cases were characterized by diverse organisational cultures and diverse H&S practices informed by habits and intuitive behaviour, as well as cognitive strategies and decisions for implementation. H&S was not the top priority for these cases. Good performance related to alignment with the prevailing culture rather than pursuit of a “safety culture”.

The term “safety culture” is misdirected; greater attention on what is, rather than normative models and prescription, is necessary. Generalisation is limited by the case‐based approach.

Practitioners need to pay more attention to organisational culture and alignment of H&S practices, to the unintended consequences of prescriptions, and robust systems.

The way activities are conducted requires awareness of the prevailing culture in order to align the structure and processes to the culture for effective operations. These implications are general, and within project business and management, Failure to do so carries increased risk of failing to satisfy business and broader stakeholder interests.

Anomalies in H&S research and practice are challenged, especially “safety culture” and normative approaches. The contribution is the combination employment of the Schein and Douglas models to understand organisational culture and H&S cultural alignment.

In order to succeed in an action under the Equal Pay Act 1970, should the woman and the man be employed by the same employer on like work at the same time or would the woman still be covered by the Act if she were employed on like work in succession to the man? This is the question which had to be solved in Macarthys Ltd v. Smith. Unfortunately it was not. Their Lordships interpreted the relevant section in different ways and since Article 119 of the Treaty of Rome was also subject to different interpretations, the case has been referred to the European Court of Justice.

This chapter considers assistive technology (AT) for learners from an economic perspective. Drawing on human rights and human capability approaches, we suggest that individual practitioners can identify the likely cost implications of provision and nonprovision to support their recommendations and assist funders and policymakers to make fiscally sound decisions. We present a range of approaches to evaluating and documenting the costs and outcomes of AT for learning and education. Policy and resourcing contexts are discussed, as is the role for the practitioner in systemic advocacy for early investment in AT to support individual and societal outcomes.

The author argues that we must stop and take a look at what our insistence on human labour as the basis of our society is doing to us, and begin to search for possible alternatives. We need the vision and the courage to aim for the highest level of technology attainable for the widest possible use in both industry and services. We need financial arrangements that will encourage people to invent themselves out of work. Our goal, the article argues, must be the reduction of human labour to the greatest extent possible, to free people for more enjoyable, creative, human activities.