Imagine a world without a hand.  Depending on which hand you are missing, life could change drastically.  You could temporarily lose the ability to write, or to eat.  You will have to learn to do new things with the other hand, and adjust to life while crippled.  What about if you lost both hands? How hard would your life become then? What losing an entire arm? Missing a foot? Both feet? An entire leg? Both legs? Imagine living life with one of these struggles. Now imagine a place where you get some of those losses back, while also being given personal treatment to help you improve your life and adjust.  At Human Design’s Prosthetics and Orthotics, assistance is given to these people through therapy as well as the construction of prosthetic limbs.  To me, Human Designs is a place that helps heal those that are suffering in ways we cannot imagine.  Human Designs really captures what it means to selflessly dedicate your time and work to helping others.  This kind of treatment towards patients and customers is being lost today with huge corporations coming in and dominating the market, treating people as “cash cows” and caring more about profit and insurance than service, but nothing really beats the satisfaction of helping someone less fortunate on a personal level.

Prosthetics is the Ferraco family business.  My father, Eric Ferraco (pictured to the right), is the CEO and founder of Human Designs Prosthetics and Orthotics.  It was founded in June, 1990, first opening up a little office in Long Beach, California.  He became involved in prosthetics when his own father died and he started to work for a friend’s father to help make some money for his family.  This unique stage in his life helped him shape the goal for Human Designs, which he explained was to create a company that emphasized passionate, caring support and service to patients in need.  Since I idolize my dad and his work, I decided to check out this industry to see if I wanted to possibly start my own career in the field of prosthetics.  But my father did not really let me get involved in his office until this past summer, where I worked as a lab assistant in creating prosthetic limbs.

While working at the Human Designs office, I was surprised at the level of personal treatment that took place.  I had worked a summer job helping out in a hospital several years before, so I had some experience seeing the relationship between patients and doctors (although in the case of prosthetics, practitioners).  At the hospital, patients were not given the same intimate care that Human Designs and my father gave these same type of patients.  For example, one patient (due to confidentiality laws, I cannot give names) had lost leg in the Iraq war and went to a hospital to receive treatment from a large prosthetic corporation.  Although the hospital gave him a prosthetic and had a program to help him rehabilitate, the patient constantly had problems with the prosthetic.  The patient eventually left the treatment program at the hospital to come see my father at Human Designs, and quickly received a much better prosthetic, one that was comfortable and did not constantly break, while also receiving a better treatment program.  That man is still my father’s patient many years later, and lauded the personal treatment he received. Unfortunatley, this kind of experience is not that uncommon.- which is saddening to say about the treatment the average veteran might be receiving.

Human Designs has a front office, complete with comfortable patient rooms for consultations.  Behind this business front and rooms, there is a huge laboratory where the prosthetics are constructed.  In this laboratory there are literally dozens of fake arms and legs on tables and shelves.  It amazes me that there were that many people in this area that required a fake limbs.  There is always some modification needed to be done to please a patient, so my father assimilated a staff of workers to spend hours everyday perfecting these customized models for those patients.  Often times, theses employees had worked for large prosthetic chain (such as Hanger), and upon asking them, I found out that much more is expected out of them at Human Designs to make a comfortable and functioning prosthetic or brace than there ever was at these large chains. One employee even left his own father’s company to go work for my father, saying he wanted to get more “personal” with his patients.  This again supports the idea that nothing really beats working in a small, intimate company that cares about its patients.

After finding out the goal behind Human Designs, I asked my father if his intimate care of patients has possibly led to losing some possible profit and business growth to the giant corporations.  My father laughed, and said “No of course not.  25 years ago I started this business with only 1 small office in Long Beach, but now my company has spread and we have offices Arcadia, Tustin, and Downey.  If our products and care were inferior and unfairly priced, then how do you explain the growth we have experienced?”.  This answer surprised me, but made a lot of sense.  And when you think about it, its pretty confident and admirable.  I could easily see how patients were satisfied in their treatment, and would quickly spread word and write reviews about Human Designs.  Just working there and spending time with the patients again shows that its not always about the money in business; some companies really do care for their customers- which is something I argue should be brought back to focus in the business world.  

When I came home for spring break, I visited the Human Designs office in Long Beach to take note of what I saw with new eyes.  There was the same old office I had known for years, and a waiting room full of patients eagerly waiting for their appointments. Lined up along the walls were pictures of diplomas belonging to staff members, framed newspaper articles about patients that had their lives largely impacted by Human Designs, and awards given to Human Designs corroborating the business and it’s accomplishments.  After a day at Human Designs I went to the other offices to compare, and saw they all had their own respective awards and framed articles.  This opened my eyes; not only is Human Designs a small and caring company, but it also was an accomplished and successful one that has spread, just as my dad claimed.

As I pressed on further, I reentered the laboratory where I spent most of my time this past summer, learning how to modify fake legs.  The workers worked just as hard as always, but remembered me well and asked me how college has been. Now, this might just be being polite and acknowledging the boss’s son, but these workers acted the same way 5 minutes later when a patient was brought though the laboratory.  When I helped out in the hospital, that kind of hospitality was absent. This made me smile as I remembered what my interviewee said about “personal care and support”.

During my visit on spring break, my father asked me to sit in while assisting a special patient. This was one of the most powerful moments of my life, and honestly when I realized that I want to work in the field of prosthetics and orthotics.   In this appointment, my father was handling the orthotics side of Human Designs rather than his usual prosthetics, which focused on braces to help rehabilitate patients or train their muscles to act a certain way.  This particular patient was a toddler with severe cerebral palsy, and did not have the ability to speak.  His disease also damaged his muscles drastically to the point where the patient could hardly walk at all.  The young boy was accompanied by his two parents, who had to comfort their son as my father gently put the braces on the boy’s knees.  Once the braces were on, the boy relaxed and smiled at my father.  The two parents were incredibly thankful of my father, and quickly scheduled another appointment so my father could check on their son’s progress.  The feelings I came away with after this appointment were powerful; not many companies spend intimate time dealing with and helping another person in that condition.  It blew my mind that a human being had to live like that, but it also made me proud that my family’s business welcomes the challenge of making that person’s life easier.

Every time I visit Human Designs, I get a little bit inspired to go out and pursue a career similar to my father’s.  I want to do something with my life that involves helping others, specifically people that are facing physical disabilities or missing a limb. I marvel that my father has created a successful life through building up a business that continues the old fashioned techniques of placing customers and service above pure profits.  When I come home for the summer, I plan to spend more time at this office and learning my father’s trade so I can continue building up what he has built.  It saddens me a little bit that in the field of medicine, many patients do not get the treatment needed, as companies today are more concerned with making money.  Human Designs has helped me plan my career path, and more importantly opened my eyes to the struggles of other people, and how I can make a difference.

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Works Cited:

hyperlink 1: http://www.scu.edu/ethics/publications/iie/v1n4/healthy.html

hyperlink 2: http://www.humandesigns.com/index.html

hyperlink 3: http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/index.html

hyperlink 4: http://www.hanger.com/pages/default.aspx

Picture 1: http://www.humandesigns.com

Picture 2: http://www.humandesigns.com