Excerpt from oral history with bio-engineer David Gow (DG), interviewed for Lothian Health Services Archive by Carmen Hesketh (CH). Transcription:

DG: “I wouldn’t like to say, it’s a very very general, saying this, but I don’t think there’s been much work done on patient satisfaction with prosthetic outcomes, or patient satisfaction in reality. If you saw a video of a patient fitted with an Edinburgh hand, then the question I would ask afterwards is “well, where do they leave it when they don’t wear their prosthesis?” which might be for twenty-four hours a day – they might only wear it for ‘photo calls’. I have worries about that, as well. [….] very perceptive.”

CH: “Do you think that there is any way that patient satisfaction could be evaluated or even improved?”

DG: “Oh yes, well you can evaluate some parts of it, and I’m sure there are techniques that can touch on “What do you think of your rehabilitation?”. The question is, who do you ask and how do you ask it? Because…it’d have to be anonymous, for a start. And companies would say that if you don’t evaluate patients, how do you know what to design? I mean, you design something for patients because you think you’ve observed the fact that they haven’t used something, because there’s not a gripping choice, orientation of the hand…there’s not a wrist rotator that works strong enough for them. So, I think you have to take the patient away from the commercial sector to get…because they might…most patients that are happily fitted with something in the Health Service, who could say called “golden patients”, they’re probably getting everything that they go to their prosthetist and ask for, you know. I mean, my idea of a prosthetic world would be, you see a prosthetist, “I’d really like to try the latest bionic hand”, and you try every bionic hand in the world until you get one that’s right. Never stop trying every bionic hand in the world until it’s right. So I wonder if the patients fitted with anything in TouchBionics’ point of view – “golden patients”, the ones that are in the literature – is that what they do with their hands every day, what you see in the photograph? I don’t think it is.”