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Web site spotlight: Nintendo system supports Wiihabilitation

Staff Development Weekly: Insight on Evidence-Based Practice in Education, April 9, 2008

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The Nintendo Wii, a game system that requires users to act out the game with a motion-sensor controller, has become part of the therapy routine for a growing number of providers around the country. Although its original intent was simply to be a fun way to spend some time, therapists using the system are swearing by its results.

"I got interested in it because of my nephew, who played it all the time," says Lane Blondheim, MSPT, MT, owner and director of Active Health and Rehab in Montgomery, AL. "One day, I started playing a game with him and realized almost immediately that I could use this with my patients and it'd be fun for them."

The patients' enjoyment added to the benefits of the Wii, but Blondheim especially liked the therapeutic benefits of the system.

Making fun practical

Although it's easy to say using a Wii for rehab works because you see patients moving their arms and being active playing "virtual" tennis, baseball, and boxing, it's quite another thing to come up with actual plans of care involving the system.

Blondheim says it's really not that different than developing activities for other therapy equipment. "You're trying to deliver therapeutic change," he says. "So if you have a patient with shoulder impingement, you want to get [him or her] to move the affected shoulder in a particular way, but you also need to restrict certain movements."

Editor's note: This excerpt was taken from the article "Nintendo system kicking off wave of Wiihabilitation", found in the Reading Room of HCPro's new resource, www.StrategiesForNurseManagers.com!  

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