The I-HaND study aimed to address a gap in patient-reported outcome measures which assess the impact of nerve trauma and compression in  the hand

Research design and outputs

A three-phase study using mixed methods was undertaken to develop and validate a patient-reported questionnaire, the Impact of Hand Nerve Disorders (I-HaND). Face-to-face interviews with 14 patients and subsequent pilot-testing with 61 patients resulted in the development of the content of a new 32-item PROM. A final longitudinal, repeated-measures validation study with 82 patients assessed the psychometric properties of the I-HaND.

Patients found the I-HaND to be relevant and highly acceptable. Evaluation of its psychometric properties confirmed that the I-Hand has excellent test-retest reliability, construct validity and is responsive to change over three months.  

The 32-item I-HaND scale is the first condition-specific PROM validated for people with a range of hand nerve disorders.

Please contact Prof C Jerosch-Herold  if you wish to translate and cross-culturally adapt the I-HaND for use in other languages and countries. These are derivative works and require a licence agreement.
 

Ongoing projects: 

Translation of the I-HaND into Turkish, Dutch and German 
Fit an Item Response Model (IRT) and Computer Adapted Testing to the full I-HaND
(further details will be posted here with links and references when available)
 

References:

Ashwood M, Jerosch-Herold C,  Shepstone L (2018) Development and validation of a new patient-reported outcome measure for peripheral nerve disorders of the hand, the I-HaND Scale. J Hand Surgery Eur 2018 43:864-874 https://doi.org/10.1177/1753193418780554

Ashwood M, Jerosch-Herold C, Shepstone L (2018) Learning to live with a hand nerve disorder: A constructed grounded theory. J of Hand Therapy 2019: 32:3: 334-344 DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jht.2017.10.015
 

Download the I-HaND Scale for Clinical Use

The research team

Principal Investigator: Dr Mark Ashwood (School of Health Sciences, UEA)

Co-investigators: Professor Christina Jerosch-Herold (School of Health Sciences, UEA); and Professor Lee Shepstone (Norwich Medical School, UEA)

External collaborators/Local Principal Investigators: Mrs Debbie Larson; Mrs Kathryn Johnson; Mrs Caroline Miller; Mr Dominic Power; Mrs Nikki Burr; Mrs Megan Blakeway; Ms Sarah Mee; Mrs Raelene Marx; Dr Niall Fitzpatrick; Miss Sarah Turner and the members of their clinical teams.

Funding

Mark Ashwood was funded through a University of East Anglia, Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences PhD Studentship. Christina Jerosch-Herold was funded through a National Institute for Health Research (NIHR) Senior Research Fellowship (NIHR-SRF-2012-05-119).

 

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