Why Are Doctors Reluctant to Recommend Mobility Aids?
/By Crystal Lindell
There’s a common thought process among doctors when it comes to opioid pain medications.
They usually don’t prescribe them unless you specifically ask for them, because they don’t want to “encourage” you to use them. But also, if you do ask for opioids, then they label you as a drug seeker and assume you’re looking for “the easy way out” or to get high.
In short, most doctors try very hard to avoid giving patients opioids, unless they want to treat addiction with Suboxone – which ironically contains the opioid buprenorphine.
While I strongly disagree with every part of that thought process, in that situation doctors at least have the excuse that they have to worry about the DEA and losing their medical licenses.
I’ve also noticed that many doctors have the same thought process when it comes to prescribing and/or recommending mobility aids like walking canes, crutches and wheelchairs.
They don’t like to suggest them to patients because they don’t want to “encourage” their use. However, on the other end, if a patient does ask for them, doctors also bristle at that. They seem to think that mobility aids are, like opioids, “the easy way out.”
Of course, there’s nothing easy about either opioids or mobility aids. If a patient has gotten to a point where they feel the need to use either one, chances are they are needed.
I noticed these anti-mobility aid attitudes among doctors myself, when I had pain from a bone spur on my heel. My doctors never suggested crutches, and I had to figure out for myself that not using my foot was the only thing that seemed to help relieve the pain. I had some crutches at home from a previous injury, and using them allowed me to still function while also not putting weight on my foot. They also allowed my body to heal.
Years ago, when my fiancé had a severe hip injury, he had to go out and buy his own cane because his doctors had not even suggested one, much less prescribed one – despite the very clear need.
Online you’ll find multiple Reddit threads of patients expressing frustration at how doctors approach mobility aids. About a year ago in the “Mobility Aids” section of Subreddit, a poster asked, “Why are doctors so hesitant to let patients use mobility aids?”
“I use forearm crutches because I struggle to walk sometimes because of how much my pain hurts and my doctor thinks I have [an] autoimmune disorder that causes this pain which I'm getting more testing for but he goes ‘you're 19 you don't need mobility aids.’ But I have literally fallen over before. Laid in bed in agony barely able to move. Cried from how much it hurts and so much more yet they want to deny me what helps me get around?”
The post then has multiple responses from readers lamenting that they have had the same experience with doctors.
“I’ve had the same issues with doctors and just got mobility aids on my own, not through a doctor. I don't understand why doctors avoid it though because there’s been days at a time where I couldn’t leave my bed and it was hard to go anywhere or do anything on bad days [and] even on good days I still have troubles,” one poster wrote.
There is research that seems to confirm those fears.
A recent study in The Lancet found demographic, socioeconomic and social barriers impacted how much access people had to "mobility assistive products" or MAPs. They surveyed 12,080 people over age 50 in England and found that 42% had an unmet need for a mobility aid.
Researchers found that women were more likely to have difficulty accessing mobility aids when they have a need for them. They also found that older patients who were unemployed or had a low education level had more trouble accessing MAPs.
Interestingly, having a romantic partner also increased the chances of having an unmet need for a mobility aid, whereas being single actually made patients more likely to have them. My guess is that single people are more likely to advocate for access to mobility aids, because they don’t have a partner at home to help them with daily tasks.
Other studies have shown a prejudice toward patients with mobility aids among doctors.
For example, a 2023 study published in the National Library of Medicine looked at physicians' attitudes about caring for disabled patients. They interviewed doctors in focus groups and found many had medical offices that presented “physical barriers to providing health care for people with disabilities, including inaccessible buildings and equipment.”
Some doctors openly admitted the lack of accessibility in their clinics. For example, one rural primary care physician said, “I know for a fact our building is not accessible.”
If a doctor doesn’t even offer an accessible building to patients, odds are that they don’t prioritize mobility aids for the patients either.
It seems that doctors assume that if patients start using a mobility aid, they’ll end up using it for the rest of their lives. But in my case and my fiance’s case, that’s not what happened. We both used them short term, and stopped as soon as we were healthy enough to do so.
Regardless, who cares if people use mobility aids for the rest of their lives? Would that be such a bad thing? Being alive and independent with mobility aids is preferable to being confined at home and/or losing your independence.
Perhaps some doctors see patients with mobility aids as a failure on their part. After all, if a patient needs them, then the doctor must not be doing enough to treat them.
Mobility aids are exactly what the name implies – an aid that gives people more mobility, and by extension, more independence and freedom. They can greatly improve someone’s quality of life, whether they are used long or short-term.
There’s no reason for doctors to gate-keep mobility aids, other than their own ablest bias. If they actually want to help patients, they should be suggesting them a lot more often.
