Choosing a prosthesis can be confusing in the best of circumstances. Choosing your first prosthesis—when you don’t understand how the device works, what options are available, or what configuration of components best meets your needs—can put you in a daze.
That’s what prompted a team of limb-care researchers to develop the Decision-Making Aid for Lower Limb Prosthetics a couple of years ago. This prototype tool (which Amplitude described in the November 2024 print edition) helps patients establish priorities to guide their prosthetic care. In addition to the device’s function, the Decision-Making Aid addresses issues such as cost, aesthetics, lifestyle goals, and daily routines, along with interpersonal preferences for communication style, information sharing, and more.
“There are so many options that it can be really overwhelming,” says Chelsey Anderson, a certified prosthetist who led the development of the Decision-Making Aid. “We’re trying to help make that information digestible, especially for people who are getting their first prosthesis and contending with all the health complications and emotions that come with losing a limb.”
Anderson’s work has inspired an initiative to further explore the patient experience, with the goal of building a user-friendly information hub that amputees can use to make well-informed choices. The project is called My Prosthetic Priorities—and it needs your input.
My Prosthetic Priorities is conducting a global survey to understand how lower-limb amputees feel about the experience of choosing their first prosthesis. It’s backed by a group of amputee-serving nonprofits in the US and UK; Amplitude is the project’s media partner. By participating, you’ll help create an educational resource that equips lower-limb amputees to identify the prosthetic device that best meets their needs. You’ll also give prosthetists, rehab specialists, and other clinicians valuable data to support more responsive, evidence-based care.
Those rewards will be shared by the entire limb-loss community. In addition, one lucky survey participant will win a $400 Amazon voucher.
This is the largest survey of its type ever undertaken, and it seeks to learn:
• How prepared you felt to select a prosthesis
• Whether you felt your needs were heard and addressed
• What worked—and what didn’t—about your first prosthetic limb
• How you think the process can be improved in the future
The survey only takes a few minutes to complete, and it’s completely anonymous. No personal details will be collected. (If you choose to enter the Amazon prize drawing, you’ll have to leave contact details so you can be notified if you win—but that information will be entered in a separate form that is not linked to your survey responses.)
The survey runs through March 31; Amplitude will report on the findings after they’re tabulated. If you’d like a one-stop data source for all your prosthetic questions—and/or if you’d like $400 to blow on Amazon—take the survey. And ask your friends with limb loss to do the same.
