Beaton D
Dr. Dorcas Beaton
Scientist
PhD, Health Measurement, University of Toronto
Dr. Dorcas Beaton has a thing for hands. As she explains it, “hands are a tool for both work and expression. They embody creativity. They touch. They’re incredibly complex and capable of both rough and delicate movement.”
Dr. Beaton entered the field of health and safety through her clinical work as a hand therapist. She knows better than most how vulnerable hands are to workplace injuries. Even in so-called non-manual jobs, where much of the work is done with computers, hand and upper limb motions and postures can lead to injury.
In her work as a scientist at the Institute for Work & Health, Dr. Beaton focuses on research questions about health measurement. Her doctoral research, for example, explored different ways of measuring health improvements following a workplace injury.
“How do you know if you’re better? As it happens, people gauge their recovery from a musculoskeletal condition in many different ways, with some adapting to a disability and others redefining what good health means. For some, though, there are improvements to pain and functional limitations. We wanted to know how well our existing pain measures capture these improvements,” she says.
Dr. Beaton is the lead researcher of a health measurement scale named the DASH (Disabilities of the Arm, Shoulder and Hand). The DASH and its shorter version, the QuickDASH, is among the most widely used clinical function scales in the world. She currently leads a team of researchers who are translating the DASH into multiple languages and developing clinical guidelines for its use.
Dr. Beaton is associate professor in the Department of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto. She has graduate appointments and supervises students through Clinical Epidemiology (Health Policy Management and Evaluation) and Rehabilitation Sciences. Dr. Beaton is a scientist and director of the Mobility Program Clinical Research Unit, Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto.
Bio Sketch
Dr. Dorcas Beaton is a scientist at the Institute for Work & Health and an associate professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy at the University of Toronto. She has graduate appointments in Rehabilitation Sciences and in the Clinical Epidemiology Program of Health Policy Management and Evaluation. She is a scientist at the Li Ka Shing Knowledge Institute of St. Michael’s Hospital and Director of Mobility Program Clinical Research Unit at that hospital.
With a background in occupational therapy, Dr. Dorcas Beaton worked as a clinician for several years in orthopedics and upper-extremity rehabilitation. She holds an MA in clinical epidemiology and a PhD in health measurement, specifically on the interpretation of change scores from outcome measures.
Her research interests remain in the area of measurement (disability, recovery, work disability, interpreting scores) and in the upper extremity musculoskeletal disorders. She conducts quantitative and qualitative research and supervises graduate students interested in musculoskeletal conditions and measurement-related sciences. She is part of the measurement research group at IWH.
Current Projects
Skills for job recovery: Testing the feasibility of an online program for developing self efficacy and the skills needed for the job of returning to optimal work
Measurement methodology studies
‘Tail of curve’ factors: Longitudinal cohort of workers with longer term WSIB claims
Measurement of worker productivity in arthritis
I CAN WORK alliance on worker productivity outcome measures
DASH Outcome Measure: Measurement properties, application and interpretability
Selected Publications
Beaton D, Van Eerd D, Smith P, Van Der Velde G, Cullen K, Kennedy C, Hogg-Johnson S. Minimal change is sensitive, less specific to recovery: A diagnostic testing approach to interpretability. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2011; 64(5): 487-496.
Beaton DE, Tang K, Gignac MA, Lacaillle D, Badley EM, Anis AH, et al. Reliability, validity, and responsiveness of five at-work productivity measures in patients with rheumatoid arthritis or osteoarthritis. Arthritis Care & Research, 2010 ;62(1):28-37.
Tang K, Beaton DE, Boonen A, Gignac MA, Bombardier C. Measures of work disability and productivity: Rheumatoid Arthritis Specific Work Productivity Survey (WPS-RA), Workplace Activity Limitations Scale (WALS), Work Instability Scale for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA-WIS), Work Limitations Questionnaire (WLQ), and Work Productivity and Activity Impairment Questionnaire (WPAI), Arthritis Care & Research, 2011; 63 (S11): S337–S349.
Tang K, Macdermid JC, Amick BC III, Beaton DE. The 11-item workplace organizational policies and practices questionnaire (OPP-11): Examination of its construct validity, factor structure, and predictive validity in injured workers with upper-limb disorders. American Journal of Industrial Medicine, 2011; 54(11):834-846.
Tang K, Escorpizo R, Beaton DE, Bombardier C, Lacaille D, Zhang W, Anis AH, Boonen A, Verstappen SM, Buchbinder R, Osborne RH, Fautrel B, Gignac MA, Tugwell PS. Measuring the impact of arthritis on worker productivity: Perspectives, methodologic issues, and contextual factors. Journal of Rheumatology, 2011; 38(8):1776-1790.
Tang K, Beaton DE, Gignac MA, Bombardier C. Rasch analysis informed modifications to the Work Instability Scale for Rheumatoid Arthritis for use in work-related upper limb disorders. Journal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2011; 64(11):1242-1251.