Osteoarthritis (OA) is the most common joint disease. While research activities in OA have concentrated on the knee and hip in recent years, knowledge and research results in the field of hand OA are still limited. In order to measure the effects of treatment or to obtain information on the course of a disease and the health status of a patient, outcome measures are commonly used in rheumatology. Such measures are variables which can be quantified and which represent either the perspective of health professionals or the perspective of patients or both. The aim of this article is to evaluate clinical outcome measures and corresponding instruments which are currently used for patients with hand OA, and to examine whether these measures and instruments represent the perspective of patients. For hand OA, measurements of disease activity and inflammation, function and performance, pain, mobility and stiffness, deformity and aesthetic damage are recommended by experts. Corresponding instruments are available for most of these outcome measures, but these often do not sufficiently represent the perspective of the patients. Some instruments lack reliability because standardized protocols for measurement have not yet been developed.