Influence of psychological factors on healthcare visits of patients with instability of the hand-wrist

Rationale: Many patients visit the outpatient clinic with instability of the hand-wrist. Where one group of patients only visit the outpatient clinic three of four times for this diagnosis, the other groups visits the outpatient clinic more often. There was seen that patients visit the clinic more than ten times for this diagnosis. Although the treatment for all these patients are set in by the same protocol there seem to be differences. Medically there are said not to be differences between the clinical presentation. We would like to perform a study with this groups of patients with instability of the hand-wrist to see whether there are psychological differences and how to guide/coach patients, to treat these patients better and to lower the healthcare consumption in this group.

Objective: The primary objective of this study is to find out whether there are differences between frequent and infrequent visitors of the outpatient clinic with instability of the hand-wrist at the orthopedic department of the Reinier de Graaf hospital for the factors coping, pain catastrophizing, anxiety, optimism and function of the hand wrist.

Study design: A prospective study using a retrospective population of patients that visited the outpatient clinic of orthopedic department in 2017 and 2018 with the diagnosis of hand-wrist instability. Patients will be asked to participate by completing questionnaires once.

Study population: The study populations consists of male and female > 18 years old who were diagnosed with hand-wrist instability and visited the outpatient clinic in 2017 or 2018.

Main study parameters/endpoints: The outcome of the study will show possible differences between frequent visitors with instability of the hand-wrist of the outpatient clinic measured by analysing the Brief COPE, PCS, HADS-Anxiety, LOT-R. The QuickDASH and PRWHE were already measured in the PROMS (patient reported outcome measures) and will be analyzed for this study.

Nature and extent of the burden and risks associated with participation, benefit and group relatedness: Questionnaires will be filled in once, after informed consent has been signed. There will be no extra visits or activities apart from the questionnaires. Questionnaires can be completed digitally.

N/A

Questionnaires are to be filled in once

6 short questionnaires

The questionnaires are about coping, pain catastrophizing, optimism, anxiety, experience of the treatment, basic patient questions.