Staff roll together for OT Week wheelie challenge
The wheelchair race is a fun event and a great opportunity for team-building.
Witbank Provincial Hospital’s Occupational Therapy Department hosted a wheelchair race as a build-up to Heritage Day and National Occupational Therapy Week.
The team celebrated a bit earlier this year, hosting their annual OT Week Wheelchair Race at Witbank Provincial Hospital on September 18.
The team organised the event among hospital colleagues as a fun and interactive way of bringing staff together while raising awareness around wheelchair use, accessibility and some of the barriers faced by people who use wheelchairs.
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For the race, hospital employees formed teams of four and competed in a relay-style wheelchair race. Each team member had an opportunity to wheel a section of the course before handing over to the next teammate, working together to reach the finish line.
This year’s winning team was a wonderful representation of multidisciplinary teamwork, consisting of an occupational therapist, physiotherapist, audiologist, and speech and language therapist.
The second-place spot went to another multidisciplinary team consisting of a physiotherapist, dietitian, registered nurse and professional nurse.
They brought incredible energy to the event and walked away with the award for Best Team Spirit.
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The Archives Department won third place and also took home the award for Best Dressed Team with their striking pink tutus, which added colour and fun to the day.
“This year’s national OT Week theme is ‘Participation Matters: Transforming Lives through Meaningful Occupation’. We felt that the wheelchair race was a fitting way to introduce this message and create conversations around participation and accessibility,” said Mpho Phasha, occupational therapist at Witbank Provincial Hospital.
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Although wheelchairs are widely used in and around communities, there is still a need for greater awareness around wheelchair use and safety, the importance of wheelchair-accessible environments, and the stigma and barriers that wheelchair users may experience in their everyday lives.
“As occupational therapists, participation is at the heart of what we do. We work towards enabling people to participate as independently and meaningfully as possible in the activities that matter to them,” Phasha said.
“While our wheelchair race is a fun event and a great opportunity for team-building, we also use it as an awareness initiative. By allowing our colleagues to navigate a course using a wheelchair, we hope to encourage them to think about wheelchair mobility and accessibility from a different perspective and become more aware of how the physical environment can either enable or restrict a person’s participation. Ultimately, through our annual wheelchair race, we hope to bring our hospital community together while promoting awareness, inclusion, accessibility and meaningful participation for all,” Phasha added.
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