It is common for the patients to lose their ability to complete daily living activities with their hands after stroke, arthritis, or any kind of traumatic injuries. Then they have to seek treatment to regain their hands’ functionality.
As a hand therapist, you intend to provide the best treatment to restore the upper extremity functioning of your patients. Therefore, you use multiple techniques and tools for their hand rehabilitation.
However, in some cases, patients don’t feel motivated to continue necessary hand therapy treatment either because they want to avoid pain or they get bored with the mundane exercises. Lack of consistency and non-adherence to treatment prevents them from achieving a successful outcome, and sometimes you may have to initiate their treatment from scratch, which is time-consuming and costly.
To resolve this problem, many reputed healthcare equipment manufacturing companies have designed unique, simple yet engaging hand therapy tools and devices. These new tools encourage patients to accomplish their daily hand therapy targets and thereby strengthen hands and improve fine motor skills.
You can update your hand therapy tool kit with these latest must-have devices and make each therapeutic session exciting for patients!
Let’s talk about them one by one…
1. Strapping/ Taping
Strapping or taping is the first and essential thing in a hand therapist’s toolbox. You can use strapping to stabilize dislocation and fracture in fingers. Basically, the therapy tape is used to overlap the injured location to prevent re-injury between hand therapy sessions. Overlapping with therapeutic tape provides enough support to the injured place and accelerates the healing process. However, with strapping, patients can’t use their full range of motion.
2. Kinesiology tape
Kinesio tape is different from Traditional tape. It is made with a blend of cotton and nylon. It is designed to mimic human skin’s elasticity; therefore, patients can use their complete range of motion.
The adhesive in kinesiology tape is water-resistant and strong enough to stay for three to five days. The Kinesio tape reacts with body health and offers adequate support by staying firm and in place throughout the day. Thus, hand therapists prefer to use Kinesio tape for severe injuries. However, it is for one-time use and designed to last longer.
3. Therapeutic/ Stacking Cones
Stacking cones are a must-have tool in upper-extremity rehabilitation. It comes in a slightly textured surface so one can grasp it tightly. Hand therapists use this cone to increase patients’ dexterity in their therapeutic sessions. It is a great tool to boost patients’ grasping abilities by strengthening hands and fingers and also improves hand-eye coordination.
You can use therapeutic cones for patients suffering from carpal tunnel syndrome, wrist fracture, muscle/tendon tear, hand arthritis, and nerve damage.
4. Hammer & wrist maze
Hammer is used to strengthen the forearm muscles and develop a good grasping ability by rotating the hammer side-to-side. At the same time, a wrist maze is used to mobilize patients’ wrists in all directions. It is a suitable tool to increase wrist flexibility.
5. Finger Exerciser; an excellent option for strengthening finger muscle
Finger exercise is an excellent option for conditioning the brain and strengthening the finger muscles of a stroke patient with repetitive exercise; it also helps patients to rebuild their dexterity and range of motion of their fingers.
Include a finger exerciser along with therapy putty to accelerate the effectiveness of your hand therapy program because it adds even more challenge to existing therapy.
6. Squegg device; A Digital Grip strengthener
Squegg is a premium digital game-based hand therapy device, very different from conventional hand strengthening tools. This high-tech grip strengthening tool encourages patients to complete high repetitions of hand therapy exercises.
How does the Squegg device help in hand therapy?
- It helps to improve blood circulation in the affected arm of the patient
- Strengthen forearm muscle and finger joints
- Improve hand muscles movement
- Recuperate hand & mind coordination*
- Enrich information processing skill*
- Improve cognitive behaviour*
- Release stress and anxiety
*Studies suggest that games that focus on hand muscle movement in turn can improve cognitive function and motor skills.
Squegg, the bluetooth-enabled grip strengthener is something that patients want to use daily because of its fun-filled gamified features.
The device is not only a favorable option for patients but also therapists.
With It, you can immediately track, measure, and analyze the grip strength of your patients.
So, make your hand therapy sessions exciting with Squegg smart device, and encourage your patients to remain consistent with it.