IWH scientist honoured with lifetime achievement award

Institute for Work & Health Senior Scientist Dr. Dorcas Beaton has been named the recipient of the International Federation of Societies for Hand Therapy (IFSHT) Lifetime Achievement Award. The award was announced last month at the IFSHT triennial meeting in Washington, D.C.

The award was created to recognize a person who has made an outstanding contribution to hand therapy internationally and whose contribution “will influence generations of hand therapists to come and benefit countless patients into the future.” In granting Beaton the award, the IFSHT cited in particular her body of work on the DASH (Diseases of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand) Outcome Measure and the QuickDASH, both developed at IWH.

The DASH is a 30-item questionnaire that measures physical function and symptoms in patients with any of several musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs) of the upper limb. Designed to help describe the disability and also to monitor changes in symptoms and function over time, the tool gives clinicians and researchers the advantage of having a single, reliable instrument that can be used to assess any or all joints in the upper extremity.

Beaton, a member of the team that developed the DASH, also led the development of its shorter version, the 11-item QuickDASH. She continued to support both tools to ensure that they were scientifically rigorous measures. Nearly 30 years since the launch of the DASH, over 300 studies have been done to evaluate the reliability and validity of the two instruments. Thousands of publications have documented their use in many different patient populations. The two tools have been translated into 44 languages, with 25 more in progress. 

As one of the founding members of the Canadian Society of Hand Therapy, Beaton describes the IFSHT award as a career highlight. “Having attended IFSHT meetings in Canada, India, Argentina, Finland and the USA, I’ve come to know the faces around the room as a committed and passionate group of hand therapists and hand therapy researchers. I was both honoured and humbled to be selected for this award,” says Beaton.