May 6 - 8, 2002
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Providing Culturally Competent Disability Services
to Persons Born in other Countries May 6 - 8, 2002 |
Pacific Rim tele-rehabilitation project: cultural lessons learned in American Samoa
Borstad, A.
Sister Kenny Rehabilitation Services
Minneapolis, Minnesota USA
alexandra.borstad@allina.com
Abstract
American Samoa is a seven-island chain with a total land area of 76 square miles located some 2,300 miles southwest of Hawaii, and over 4,100 miles southwest of San Francisco. Rehabilitation professionals from National Rehabilitation Hospital and Sister K enny Institute conduct bi-monthly teleclinics with patients and their caregivers at LBJ Tropical Medical Center in Pago Pago, American Samoa. Currently one physical therapist is the only trained rehabilitation professional working there. To d ate, 58 individual patient visits have taken place during 22 Teleclinics. The intent of this presentation will be to inform the rehabilitation community about the cultural lessons learned during the delivery of rehabilitation services to individuals livin g in American Samoa, via video teleconferencing. Examples include: improvisations made to substitute locally available commodities for rehabilitation equipment commonly used on the mainland and conceptual changes made to survey instruments to render them meaningful to the community in they intend to describe.