Adjustment to hand injury: Cross-sectional survey exploring adjustment in relation to illness perceptions and coping strategies.

Methods: Cross-sectional descriptive.

Background: Hand injuries are highly prevalent, and the impact they have on physical, emotional, and functional adjustment is well recognized. Increasingly, adjustment to health conditions including hand injuries is being understood in terms of psychological variables.

Objective: To examine the role of illness beliefs and coping strategies in adjustment to hand injury. Adjustment was considered from a complete perspective including quality of life (QOL) and functional ability as well as mood and trauma symptoms.

Methods: Cross-sectional survey whereby consecutive patients (n = 65) attending the regional plastic surgery service with hand injuries were invited to complete a questionnaire assessing illness perceptions, coping strategies, QOL, hand functioning, depression, and trauma symptoms. Data were analyzed in SPSS (IBM Corporation, Armonk, NY) by correlation and then hierarchical regression analysis.

Results: Illness perceptions and coping strategies were significantly related to the adjustment outcomes (hand functioning, QOL, depression, and trauma symptoms). Specifically, poorer adjustment was associated with more negative illness beliefs (r = 0.31-0.47), greater use of denial (r = 0.24-0.53), and avoidance-based (r = 0.41-0.64) coping strategies.

Conclusions: Illness beliefs and coping play an important role in adjustment after hand injury. Adjustment is multifaceted with a need to consider physical and emotional functioning. More optimistic beliefs and adaptive coping styles are associated with improved adjustment. Conclusions: The role of psychological variables in optimizing adjustment is an important consideration for the design of psychological interventions, but because this study was cross sectional and cannot assume directional effects, future longitudinal studies are needed. Methods: N/A.