Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
focus their attention on the plurality of disability affecting the young person that neces-
sarily needs a multidisciplinary approach.
Accounts of vision rehabilitation professionals contribute mostly to clusters 2 (training)
and 4 (advocacy), which characterize this group. They represent their professional func-
tion more like training (cluster 2). The process is focused on the professional intervention
of teaching specific solutions through professional training and experience. The process is
considered morally right and attention is not directed to the relationship with someone but
on the professionals' performances. Although this representation refers to specific tools,
no attention is given to the employment of tools. Therefore, it suggests that rehabilitation
is focused on professional performance rather than on the person with disability needs.
These professionals are also characterized by advocacy (cluster 4), aiming to support
people in the development of knowledge. Visual disability implies behavioral limits that
could hinder the learning process. Therefore, the intervention is directed to young stu-
dents and aims to support their learning as a way to emancipate them from disability. It
is for this reason that the professional's function is to replace their patient's deficient one.
Whereas the rehabilitation process seems to be focused on a particular moment in life, this
cluster does not take into account the possibility of building new abilities. Substitution
seems to be the only possibility to help the disabled person, but it implies a high personal
involvement for these professionals.
Therefore it is interesting to observe the following:
• Disabled people's representations focus on their deiciencies rather than on the
resources enhancing them. They are not represented as independent, produc-
tive, self-effective, or able to solve problems. This representation does not help
professionals to motivate their patients or help them to assume an active role. A
few recent studies suggest that taking responsibility for managing their own con-
ditions with support and advice from health-care professionals is an important
factor in the rehabilitation process for patients with chronic conditions (Holman
and Lorig 2000; Bodenheimer et al. 2002; Girdler et al. 2010). This is different from
the professional teaching particular solutions or making changes to the patient's
home environment. Hence, to assume an active role in the process, people with
disability need to be motivated. This new paradigm in health care aims to pro-
vide the patients with skills and resources to manage the practical, social, and
emotional consequences of their disabilities and to seek specialist support when
needed.
• Professionals often address children and young people, whereas the ability to deal
with disabled adults of working age seems to be unexplored. In fact, restrictions
related to disability often result in loss of independence, which is often associated
with a loss of social and economic status, which also implies a cost to society.
• Those who train in the use of ATs do not wonder what these aids represent for the
disabled person and how they will be used.
• Finally, psychosocial workers seem to have less professional function speciicity.
In fact, the psychological professional's function seems to find its specificity par-
ticularly when it overlaps with psychotherapeutic specificity (Carli 1993; Cordella
et al. 2001). Nowadays, in the disability area, psychological function aims to sup-
port disabled people to face the emotional difficulties that arise from the loss of
an ability. Nevertheless, this is not the only function psychologists can carry out,
although it remains useful in the rehabilitation context.
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