Wrist splints for carpal tunnel syndrome - a guide for patients | Right Decisions

Right Decisions
Patient information leaflets
Primary & Community Services
Back
Physiotherapy
Wrist splints for carpal tunnel syndrome - a guide for patients

Announcements and latest updates

Welcome to the Right Decision Service (RDS) newsletter for August 2024.

Contingency planning for RDS outages

Following the recent RDS outages, Tactuum and the RDS team have been reviewing the learning from these incidents. We are committed to doing all we can to ensure a positive outcome by strengthening the RDS to make it fully robust and clinically resilient for the future.

We would like to invite you to a webinar on 26^th September 3-4 pm on national and local contingency planning for future RDS outages. Tactuum and the RDS team will speak about our business continuity plans and the national contingency arrangements we are putting in place. This will also be a space to share local contingency plans, ideas and existing good practice. We would also like to gather your views on who we should send communications to in the event of future outages.

I have sent a meeting request for this date to all editors – please accept or decline to indicate attendance, and please forward on to relevant contacts. You can also contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot directly to register your interest in participating.

2.National IV fluid prescribing calculator

This UK CA marked calculator is now live at https://righdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/ivfluids . It has been developed by a multiprofessional steering group of leads in IV fluids management, as part of the wider Modernising Patient Pathways Programme within the Centre for Sustainable Delivery. It aims to address a known cause of clinical error in hospital settings, and we hope it will be especially useful to the new junior doctors who started in August.

Please do spread the word about this new calculator and get in touch with any questions.

New toolkits

The following toolkits are now live;

Gender identity healthcare: adults and young people standards. (https://rightdecisions.scot.nhs.uk/genderidentity ) Note that this toolkit includes self-evaluation forms for each standard. A Scottish Government launch of these standards, together with the toolkit and NES educational resources, is planned for 3^rd September.
Care Inspectorate staffing method framework.
Vascular surgery pathways from the Modernising Patient Pathways Programme within the Centre for Sustainable Healthcare Delivery.

Updated guidance on current and future Medical Device Regulations

We have updated and simplified this guidance within our standard operating procedures. We have clarified the guidance on how to determine whether an RDS tool is a medical device, and have provided an interactive powerpoint slideset to steer you through the process.

Guide to six stages of RDS toolkit development

We have developed a guide to support editors and toolkit leads through the process of scoping, designing, delivering, quality assuring and implementing a new RDS toolkit. We hope this will help in project planning and in building shared understanding of responsibilities throughout the full development process. The guide emphasises that the project does not end with launch of the new toolkit. Implementation, communication and evaluation are ongoing activities throughout the lifetime of the toolkit.

Training sessions for new editors (also serve as refresher sessions for existing editors) will take place on the following dates:

Thursday 5 September 1-2 pm
Wednesday 24 September 4-5 pm
Friday 27 September 12-1 pm

To book a place, please contact Olivia.graham@nhs.scot, providing your name, organisation, job role, and level of experience with RDS editing (none, a little, moderate, extensive.)

7 Evaluation projects

Dr Stephen Biggart from NHS Lothian has kindly shared with us the results of a recent survey of use of the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh Anaesthesia toolkit. This shows that the majority of consultants are using it weekly or monthly, mainly to access clinical protocols, with a secondary purpose being education and training purposes. They tend to find information by navigating by specialty rather than keyword searching, and had some useful recommendations for future development, such as access to quick reference guidance.

We’d really appreciate you sharing any other local evaluations of RDS in this way – it all helps to build the evidence base for impact.

If you have any questions about the content of this newsletter, please contact his.decisionsupport@nhs.scot If you would prefer not to receive future newsletters, please email Olivia.graham@nhs.scot and ask to be removed from the circulation list.

With kind regards

Right Decision Service team

Healthcare Improvement Scotland

NHS Borders

For further advice and self care information:

visit: NHS Inform/MSK
download: "MSK help" app free from app stores
telephone: The Musculoskeletal Advice and Triage Service tel:0800 917 9390

"Information given on this site is not meant to take the place of a talk with your doctor or health worker."

Introduction

Around one third of patients suffering from carpel tunnel syndrome who are treated with wrist splints at night get better without any other treatment. This means that treatment with injections or surgery may be avoided by using a splint on your wrist at night.

Wrist splints are safe. The purpose of the splint is to stop the nerve being compressed at night when you are asleep.

Fitting

The splint should be a comfortable fit, tight enough to hold your wrist in position, but so tight as to affect your circulation or make your wrist swell. The rough side of the Velcro should not touch your skin, so if it does you will need a bigger size.

If the metal strut on the palm side digs into your palm, then you can straighten it out slightly. If your hands are not strong you might need help with this.

Use of splints

splints should be worn at night when you are asleep, for at least eight weeks
splints should only be worn at night, and should not be worn during the day
in order to be effective, splints should be worn all night every night
it may take eight weeks of splint use to notice an improvement

After eight weeks of treatment

If you are not better, continue with the splint and keep your orthopaedic appointment

If you are better and your symptoms have all resolved stop using the splint.

If your symptoms return at a later date, use the splint again for a further eight weeks. If your symptoms do not resolve after eight weeks of splint use, or your symptoms keep recurring, make an appointment to see your GP.

Next review date: 01/05/2026

Author(s): Murray J.

Author email(s): jamie.murray@nhs.scot.

Approved By: Clinical Governance & Quality

Reviewer name(s): Murray J.