SERVICES FOR SPINAL-CORD INJURED - AVAILABILITY AND SATISFACTION

This article discusses service delivery for Spinal Cord Injured (SCI) in the Netherlands. In this wealthy country, almost everyone has acces s to domestic adaptations and other equipment, regardless of income an d with low, or without user contributions. However, satisfaction with this system or its products is rarely examined. Subjects in this resea rch are 318 SCI individuals between 18 and 65 years of age, living in the community at a mean time of 3.6 years after injury. Availability o f accessible housing, domestic adaptations, wheelchairs and outdoor tr ansportation is investigated. Satisfaction with available services and satisfaction with service delivery procedures is measured by self-dev eloped questionnaires. Relationships between these satisfaction scores and measures for functional health status (SIP68) and life satisfacti on (LSQ) are analyzed. The presence of domestic adaptations is high, a nd 78.3% said their houses were sufficiently adapted at the time of th e interview. Wheelchairs were generally available and most respondents had more than one. However, many users had complaints about their whe elchairs: 35.9% about their manual wheelchairs and 47.5% about their e lectric wheelchairs. Public transport was rarely used, 51.1% of respon dents had an adapted car. Having an adapted car was significantly rela ted to the ability to drive independently. Satisfaction with available services was acceptable, but satisfaction with service delivery proce dures was very low. Satisfaction with available services did have a si gnificant relationship with functional health status when the influenc e of the type of injury was taken into account. Satisfaction with avai lable services also had a significant relationship with life satisfact ion, after the influence of functional health status was taken into ac count. Further research on this topic is recommended.