A self-report questionnaire to detect hand dermatitis in nurses

Parsons, V.; Williams, H. C.; English, J.; Llewellyn, J.; Ntani, G.; Madan, I.

Abstract

Background: Hand dermatitis is highly prevalent among nurses due to their frequent exposure to wet work. Providing cost-effective dermatological health surveillance for this occupational group presents a challenge to health service providers. Aims: To ascertain the predictive value of nurses' self-assessment of whether they had current hand dermatitis using a screening questionnaire when compared with the assessment made by a dermatologist of the nurses' hand photographs. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study comparing the self-report decision made by student and intensive care nurses using a single hand dermatitis screening question with the clinical assessment of their hand photographs made by dermatologists using a standardized photographic guide. Results: We analysed data collected at study baseline (n = 1599). The results showed that the screening question had a high negative predictive value (91%; 95% CI 89-93), but a low positive predictive value (39%; 95% CI 34-45). It demonstrated acceptable accuracy in distinguishing those with and without the disease (area under the receiver operator curve = 0.7) and had a high specificity (86%; 95% CI 84-88) but a sensitivity of only 52% (95% CI 46-59) in identifying hand dermatitis. Conclusions: We found that nurses were able to accurately self-assess themselves as not having any signs of hand dermatitis. By contrast, they were less able to accurately self-assess positive cases suggesting under-recognition of early disease. We propose that a questionnaire containing a single hand dermatitis screening question should be considered as a tool for screening out clear cases as part of a workplace health surveillance programme for detecting hand dermatitis.

Citation

Parsons, V., Williams, H. C., English, J., Llewellyn, J., Ntani, G., & Madan, I. (2020). A self-report questionnaire to detect hand dermatitis in nurses. Occupational Medicine, 70(9), 645-648. https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqaa188

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 4, 2020
• Online Publication Date: Nov 21, 2020
• Publication Date: 2020-12
• Deposit Date: Oct 15, 2020
• Publicly Available Date: Nov 22, 2021
• Journal: Occupational Medicine
• Print ISSN: 0962-7480
• Electronic ISSN: 1471-8405
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 70
• Issue: 9
• Pages: 645-648
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqaa188
• Keywords: Hand dermatitis, hand photographs, health surveillance, occupational health, questionnaire, self-report
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/4966900
• Publisher URL: https://academic.oup.com/occmed/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/occmed/kqaa188/5996918?redirectedFrom=fulltext
• Additional Information: This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in Occupational Medicine following peer review. The version of record V Parsons, H C Williams, J English, J Llewellyn, G Ntani, I Madan, A self-report questionnaire to detect hand dermatitis in nurses, Occupational Medicine, , kqaa188, https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqaa188 is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1093/occmed/kqaa188