What is a Hand Therapist?

A hand therapist is a registered occupational therapist or physiotherapist who specialises in the rehabilitation of patients with conditions affecting the hands and upper limb.

A hand therapist’s high level of specialization requires advanced post-graduate education and clinical experience. This enables him or her to help patients return to a productive lifestyle following injury, disease or deformity affecting the hand.

An experienced hand therapist can evaluate and identify problems affecting the upper limbs. He or she can provide advice regarding exercise, preventative care, aids to daily living and ergonomic consultation.

A hand therapist often works alongside surgeons, planning and implementing post-operative care in order to hasten patients’ recovery following surgery.

At The Hand Therapy Clinic our hand therapist works closely with referring consultants, GPs and other allied health professionals  in planning necessary interventions and facilitating timely, effective specialist hand or upper limb rehabilitation.  In delivering our treatment we strive to remain consistent with our core values and deliver care to you with these always at the forefront of what we do.  The Treatment Values at the core of The Hand Therapy Clinic include:

Excellence: We strive to provide you with excellent care, backed by years of clinical practice and current evidence based research.

Kindness: We practice using a holistic paradigm where we adopt a biopsychosocial approach to care.  This means that we incorporate psychological, environmental, social and physical influences on your treatment and care.

Respect and Responsibility:  We endeavour to always respect the individual’s journey with their injury.  For some this will be relatively straightforward, an injury following a preceding trauma or event, for others with more chronic symptoms  this may be more complex and require a more holistic approach to treatment.  Our responsibility is always to the patient and always to deliver the best possible care in an efficient and timely manner. Often this means a collaborative approach with other healthcare specialists, which we are always happy to assist with, should referrals or advice be required from elsewhere.