The Postural Care Passport

The Postural Care Passport digitises traditional, postural assessment documents and enables high quality photos and videos to be added to postural assessments. Content might include detailed visual and audio descriptions about how someone should be positioned within a wheelchair and when lying down.

Providing precise guidance can lead to improved comfort, better levels of care and reduce the number of avoidable deaths. This feature is available for free in MyWishes advance care plan tool for people across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

What is a Postural Care Passport?

We developed the ‘Postural Care Passport’ as a rapid and simply way for clinicians and other professionals to access someone’s postural care assessments digitally. It was developed at the request of Samantha Chadwick (Paediatric & LD Physiotherapist) of NHS Wales.

Why is the Postural Care Passport needed?

“As a physiotherapist, the majority of my children, young people and adults, are very complex and as such have multiple pieces of equipment which help provide 24 hr postural support. With so many pieces of equipment and so many brands on the market, each piece requires detailed information in how to position the person and how to make adjustments. This is very time consuming as we then have to train each individual person, but this vital information is lost if they are then admitted to hospital.

If our service users are not positioned properly, this can have a major impact on their quality of life and could even prove fatal. Incorrect positioning can result in not being able to engage with their peers and family, issues with tissue viability and even aspiration pneumonia, which is one of most common reasons of fatality with an incidence rate of 70%.

Currently information is laid out on an A5 laminated card which is clipped to the persons wheelchair. However this relies on the information being taken with the person, which is highly unlikely if that person is admitted to hospital, as wheelchairs rarely go with the person until the point of discharge. A digital version of this would allow access to vital information very quickly”.

– Samantha Chadwick (Paediatric & LD Physiotherapist)

How the Postural Care Passport works

Once a Postural Assessment is completed, a hard copy (paper) is still provided to the person and can be attached to / kept within the person’s wheelchair. In cases of emergency the hard copy should initially be referred to due to the speed of accessing it.

If however this information is lost, damaged or unavailable the digital version can be accessible by entering the person’s memorable word into their public MyWishes page. More over, if rich media (videos, audio, high quality images etc) has also been uploaded to the postural care passport they too can be rapidly accessed once the person’s memorable word has been entered. Rich media was not previously available on paper based, postural care assessments.

Digitise my postural care assessment on MyWishes

Creating a Digital Postural Care Passport (for free)

Postural care assessments can be uploaded using the specially built upload feature within MyWishes Advance Care Plan section. This is also where the user enters the memorable word associated with their Postural Care Passport.

Accepted video file formats accepted include .MP4 (typically used when shot on Android phones) and .movs (typically used when shot on iPhones). To Create a free MyWishes account click here. If you are already part of the MyWishes community simply login

“Having a Digital Postural Care Plan Passport as well as a physical copy eliminates the risk of this vital information being lost and ensures a person’s Postural Care Passport is always available in both clinical and non-clinical settings.”

Things to consider when creating a Digital Postural Care Passport

Is your Postural Care Assessment current and up to date?
Have you notified your family and Physiotherapist(s) of your wish to digitise your Postural Care Assessment?
Who might need access to your Digital Postural Care Passport? Who might you share your memorable word and your MyWishes handle (URL) with (Physiotherapists, friends, family, carers etc)?
Have you requested videos and diagrams to be included with your Postural Care Assessment from your Physiotherapist?

Rapid access

It is important that postural care assessments are rapidly available in case of emergency regardless of which electronic registers systems are used locally (for example EPACCs)
It is also important that assessments are available in both clinical and non clinical settings
It is important that assessments are rapidly available and can be viewed across various devices (laptops, mobile phones and tablets devices).

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MyWishes free to use software was developed under the guidance of healthcare, hospice, legal and funeral professionals. Our platforms empowers society to make plans for both themselves and those they care about.

The Postural Care Passport