Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Human Factors
Date Submitted: Nov 18, 2019
Date Accepted: Feb 21, 2020
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Development and Usability Testing of the Hand therapy Online Coping Skills program (HOCOS) for managing psychosocial problems in hand and upper extremity rehabilitation.
ABSTRACT
Background:
Ineffective coping has been linked to prolonged pain, distress, anxiety and depression after a hand and upper limb injury. Evidence show that interventions based on cognitive and behavioral therapy may be effective to improve treatment outcomes, but traditional psychological interventions are resource-intensive and unrealistic in busy hand therapy practices. Developing evidence-based online psychological interventions specifically for hand therapy may be feasible in practice and at home with reduced training and travel costs.
Objective:
The Hand therapy Online Coping Skills program (HOCOS) was developed to make cognitive and behavioral treatment strategies widely available to hand therapists. The aim of this study was to describe the development and assess the usability of HOCOS to aid hand therapists in the management of psychosocial problems.
Methods:
We developed HOCOS using a three-step process using feedback from information and communication technology experts and clinician contributors. The development of HOCOS was informed by heuristic testing of HOCOS with 4 ICT experts using 2 sets of heuristics; Monkman heuristics and the Health Literacy Online (HLO) Checklist. User usability testing involved 12 hand therapists performing 10 tasks on the website while using the think aloud protocol, administration of the system Usability Scale (SUS) and a semi-structured interview in two iterative cycles. Descriptive statistics and simple content analyses were used to organize data.
Results:
Heuristic evaluation revealed 15 of 35 violations on HLO checklist and 5 of 11 violations on the Monkman heuristics. The cognitive interview findings are organized into 6 themes: task performance, navigation, design aesthetics, content, functionality and features and desire for future use. Usability issued identified in cycle 1 were addressed prior to cycle 2. There was good agreement on all items of SUS. Overall, therapists found HOCOS was detailed and a helpful learning resource for therapists and patients.
Conclusions:
HOCOS is a new online psychosocial intervention for individuals with a hand and upper limb condition. We actively involved target users in the development and usability evaluation of the website. The tool was modified to meet participants needs and preferences. Clinical Trial: Not Applicable
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.