A Pilot Study Evaluating a Home Exercise Dvd for Patients Who Reside in a Rural and Remote Location

Objectives: Home exercise programs are an important component of a hand therapy rehabilitation program. Compliance with the recommended home exercise regime is generally considered essential for good treatment outcomes. The aim of this pilot was to determine the clarity of an innovative hand therapy DVD. This DVD will be utilised in a randomised controlled trial (RCT) examining the usefulness of DVD technology for enhancing treatment compliance for rural and remote hand therapy patients. Methods: A series of seven DVDs of previously utilised home exercise protocols were taped and edited by the researchers. The pilot used a convenience sample of nine consecutive consenting patients who attended the Hand Therapy Service at a regional hospital in North Queensland. Subjects viewed a DVD that related to their clinical diagnosis and then completed a questionnaire on the suitability of the research instrument. Results: There were unanimously positive responses to the DVD from all subjects, with 100% indicating yes to the prompt questions. No negative comments were received. Discussion: The DVDs produced were found to be clear and useful for a group of hand therapy patients characteristically similar to those who will be recruited into the RCT. Resulting compliance with these home exercises will be presented in a subsequent paper resulting from the RCT. Given the poor health outcomes generally associated with patients from rural and remote areas, this endeavour contributes to the ongoing effort to improve service delivery to better address the health needs of rural and remote patients.