Our NRC fellow, Amy Speight, has completed her funded year of research looking at rehabilitation for adults following upper limb amputation, and recently presented her work at a Chief AHP fellows celebration event.
Amy is one of our Occupational Therapists at Nottingham University Hospitals NHS Trust and completed a systematic review of the literature related to people's experiences following upper limb amputation.
Trans-humeral (upper limb) amputee patients often have their limb difference as a result of major traumatic incidents such as agricultural or industrial accidents or road traffic collisions; burns, sepsis or sarcoma (cancer); or elective surgery to salvage a shoulder joint or eliminate chronic pain.
Amy's research confirmed that upper limb loss has a significant impact on a person's identity, roles and function, and many people reported varied experiences of the care delivery and skills of clinicians. Many people found that there were a lot of benefits to peer support, and having a shared experience supported them with adjustment to their new lives.
This helped to reiterate that more needs to be done to ensure that there is equitable care provided to this group, both nationally and internationally - something that the NRC aims to support with.
As a result of this fellowship, we have already built links with local universities, reviewed our pathways at NUH, and have made plans to invite the people that use our service to contribute more to service design and primary research.
Amy said: "Having the time available to engage in research related activities has been essential in allowing us to start working on these service improvements and to begin to consider ways to ensure that good quality research directly influences our small patient population, and that they have the opportunity to contribute to how the services that they access are designed."