Tips for Choosing an Upper Limb Prosthetist

After an amputation, it can be overwhelming to think that you need to be involved in the process of choosing your prosthetist. You may have no idea where to start, or what questions to be asking. When beginning to learn about prosthetic devices and options, you may find it’s like buying a house or getting married — there’s a lot of new vocabulary that’s very specific to this field and it may be hard to just dive in.

You also may be looking into choosing a prosthetist because you already have a prosthetic device that you would like to replace or improve upon. Or perhaps you are a congenital amputee who has decided that you could use a prosthetic device at this point in your life. No matter the reason for your need for a device, you should be involved in the decision of who makes it for you.

Of course we would love it if you decided to meet with Arm Dynamics clinical team, and we have a list of reasons why you should, but no matter who you speak with, we want to provide you with the resources you need to be able to evaluate any upper limb prosthetist.

An upper limb prosthetist should:

• Be certified by the American Board for Certification (ABC)
• Have a minimum of three to five years of current upper limb experience, with at least 30 patients being fit in the past two years
• Work with a clinical therapy specialist who has extensive experience in upper limb prosthetic rehabilitation
• Be willing to arrange for you to speak with some of his or her patients to discuss their prosthetic care experience
• Be able to specify what types of upper limb prostheses they have fit in the past two years
• Have extensive experience with a wide variety of components and systems, including:

* Otto Bock
* Touch Bionics by Össur
* Naked Prosthetics
* Point Designs
* Motion Control by Fillauer
* TASKA
* Mobius Bionics
* IBT
* Liberating Technologies
* COAPT
*College Park Industries
*TRS
*Texas Assistive Devices
*Hosmer Dorrance
*Toughware Prosthetics
*MidWest ProCad

Following the above suggestions will help ensure that you select a prosthetist who is qualified to treat the unique rehabilitation needs of upper limb loss patients. Feel free to print out this article and take it along during your visit. You can either refer to it or hand it to them and ask them to address the points. If they are not able to give you positive answers to the above points, but they have other qualities that you enjoy or find necessary, you may want to keep them in the running — but be aware of those limitations.

Our clinical teams, as the most experienced upper limb prosthetic care providers in the world, can answer yes to all those above points. We would love to learn more about you. For more information, please visit our home page. And please comment with points that you think would be helpful to include on our list!

For more Arm Dynamics articles, see related resources here:

• Your Guide to Care with an Out-Of-Network Prosthetic Team
• Commonly Used Terms for New Amputees
• Our Arm Dynamics Prosthetists
• How We Help Our Patients Learn to Use Their Prosthesis
• Seven Reasons Arm Dynamics Centers Are Different From Other Prosthetic Care Providers