A follow up survey on the impact of COVID-19 on hand therapy practice.
Victoria Priganc, Nancy Naughton, Sarah Doerrer and 1 others
PMID 34392999WHAT IT FOUND
Hand therapists reported a slow return to normal practice with increased in-person visits and decreased telehealth use.
However, most still experienced high stress levels related to safety measures, childcare, eldercare, job security, and the political climate.
Key findings
01Most respondents reported feeling more stress than they did prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
02The use of telehealth among respondents decreased from 46% in April 2020 to 29% in December 2020.
03Post-operative cases were more likely to receive in-person treatment, while nontraumatic, nonoperative cases were more likely to receive telehealth services.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for PTsWhat it means for OTsWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The response rate was low, with only 378 members responding out of thousands invited, so the results may not represent the broader hand therapy community. The survey was self-reported and voluntary, which may introduce bias if therapists who were more stressed or concerned about the pandemic were more likely to respond. The study did not use formal qualitative methodology for the open-ended responses, limiting the depth of analysis for those data. The comparison between April and December 2020 relied on descriptive statistics rather than inferential testing for many variables, making it difficult to determine if observed changes were statistically significant.
Declared interests
The text does not report any funding sources or conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not interpret the decrease in telehealth use or the return to in-person care as evidence that telehealth is ineffective for hand therapy. The study reports therapist perceptions and practice patterns, not patient outcomes, and notes that evidence regarding the efficacy of telehealth in hand rehabilitation is lacking.