REFLECTIONS

As a physiotherapist, we have a strong concern for patient’s strength. Grip strength is important in the usage of walking aids, as well as to reach out and hold on to objects. Thus, this project is relevant for us to find out whether forearm circumference can be used as a basic indicator to determine the grip strength.
There was a lot of effort we placed in to choose our sample group and to record the data. There were doubts if the two factors were co-related as we believe there were other factors which may determine grip strength. However our sample group has proven that there is indeed a moderate co-relation between both factors. We may also make use of the procedure to test it with other age group to see if the co-relation exists. This project fulfilled our aim of testing grip strength using forearm circumference as one of the indicator.

~Teng Han

Overall, this has been an interesting experience for me. Unlike normal projects where I only have to talk about what we would do hypothetically, we actually got to carry out our project and get real results to analyze.
One difficulty our group had faced is that we had too many variables, thus we had difficulty analyzing the results. In the end, we decided to limit this study to right handers only due to the large amount of variables as well as the small sample size we had of left handers. It was a wonderful surprise for us when the results came out positive and that there is a strong relationship between grip and forearm circumference. 

~Hui Ying

I find that statistics is a vital module to have for healthcare students as research and stats are what we use for referencing in our final year project. Having a project for this module is important because it allows students to apply many things they have learnt from lectures and tutorials. When we are doing a research, first we have to be very careful and precise in our planning for the project layout and also clarify with the lecturers whenever in doubt. I do enjoy my time doing the project with my great team members and thankful towards our module lecturer for her helpful advice and guidance in our project. 

~Zhong Li

For our statistics project, I feel that our group has tried to cover as much as possible given our limited time and packed schedule. In the course of completing the project, we learnt that data collection is the most important part of the whole statistics project. With irrelevant or faulty data, our analysis of the data would also not be able to answer our hypothesis.
Sampling of the groups involved also proved to be a challenge as we all understand that if a random person approaches you for some survey or data collection, chances are that you would brush off the person. However, necessity dictates that we should do so to improve our sample distribution to more people to benefit our data analysis. Thus, we had to pluck up our courage and ask strangers to assist in our data collection. I would say that this not only trains our courage, this would also help us in clinicals where we have to talk to strangers.
Overall, I feel that our group has found that there has been some correlation between forearm girth as well as grip strength in the individual. As physiotherapist, we would see a plethora of cases and being able to predict the expected grip strength of an individual is an asset to our profession as it can help us to manage expectations as well as to adopt more a more patient centered and streamlined treatment session to benefit the patient more. The ability to gauge grip strength of the patient would also be valuable when we decide to do discharge planning of the patient as being able to grip or to hold on to objects with adequate strength is important for a patient in society. An example would be on the MRT. When the train suddenly brakes, normally our balance mechanism would not be adequate to stabilize us and as a result, we tend to grip onto the handrails. If a patient’s grip strength is low, they would not be able to stabilize themselves and fall, which means another sojourn to the hospital. Of course, we would use other methods to gauge grip strength before discharging the patient but having this skill under our belt is good as it can help us form an inkling of the patients strength before we even begin treatment/ assessment. 

~Johnathan

Our project has embarked on a project to find a correlation between grip strength and forearm circumference. This is so that we can gauge the grip strength of a patient by means of using a measuring tape instead on the not readily available dynamometer. While doing our data collection, I have noticed that there are many instances where we found measurements which go against our hypothesis like for example; there was a lady with relatively small forearm circumference whom had a strong hand grip comparable to a guy with a forearm circumference significantly larger.This led me to think that there are other factors which determine our grip strength and not just muscle bulk size or forearm circumference in this case. A few other possible factors I can think of were the ability of the brain to activate the number of muscle fibre units during the grip or even speed of conduction of these impulses to the muscle itself during the grip.
However, due to limited resources and time, our group was unable to conduct studies on correlation of above factors and hence would like to share this idea for future studies so that we would have a more accurate and fast method in measuring grip strength appropriate for clinical use in the near future. 

~Rahman

Personally i felt that we have worked hard as a team and we are satisfied with our research results.The purpose of this research project is to find out is there any positive relationship between grip strength and forearm circumference of right handers.We are glad that our findings support our hypothesis.
We feel that this hypothesis can be applied  in our clinical settings cause we are now able to gauge patients grip strength from their forearm circumference in an instance if thre is no hand held dynamometer. This can also speeds up therapist objective assessment. What i enjoyed most was the data colection process.we worked hard going around the school to look for random subjects to volunteer for our test.It's interesting to see poeple's reaction when we approached them to seek them to volunteer for our test.Some are supportive, helpful and some are also shy and reluctant to volunteer.However the whole data collection process was fulfilling and it gives me an experience of how data collection is conducted.
In conclusion, I truely treasure the whole experience of working with my team in completing this simple research project. 

~Nash