Patinet information - where can they get it??

[hoomer]

---

Members don't see this ad.

How do you inform your patient about his eye condition?
What sites do you recomend them if they ask for one?
To you have some kind of posters or fact sheets in your office? And where can i get them?
I'm going to start in private office in less than a year and i've been thinking alot about this. In the hospital office we dont have anything, so its sometimes very dificult to explain to a patient what a retinal detachment or even a caratact is.

From a study i read:
Only 36.8% of the patients collected information prior to their ophthalmic consultation. Other physicians (50% of the cases) and other patients (33.3% of cases) were the most frequent information sources. Information was mainly collected about the ophthalmologist (61.8% of the cases), and about the own eye diseases (20.6%). Only 2.8% of the patients spent more than 3 hours looking for information. 94.7% of the patients wished to be orally informed in the practice. 74.7% preferred to be informed only or also by the physician. Conclusions: Most ophthalmic patients do not represent the ideal of an informed patient. Without additional education they do not appear to have the knowledge or skill required for taking the responsibility for their own health.

So it would be much better for the patient (and for the ophthalmologist) if we could somehow (posters with the anatomy of the eye and eyelids or fact sheets) make the patient understand what happening to his eye.

 

[EyeMD116]

How do you inform your patient about his eye condition?
What sites do you recomend them if they ask for one?
To you have some kind of posters or fact sheets in your office? And where can i get them?
I'm going to start in private office in less than a year and i've been thinking alot about this. In the hospital office we dont have anything, so its sometimes very dificult to explain to a patient what a retinal detachment or even a caratact is.

From a study i read:
Only 36.8% of the patients collected information prior to their ophthalmic consultation. Other physicians (50% of the cases) and other patients (33.3% of cases) were the most frequent information sources. Information was mainly collected about the ophthalmologist (61.8% of the cases), and about the own eye diseases (20.6%). Only 2.8% of the patients spent more than 3 hours looking for information. 94.7% of the patients wished to be orally informed in the practice. 74.7% preferred to be informed only or also by the physician. Conclusions: Most ophthalmic patients do not represent the ideal of an informed patient. Without additional education they do not appear to have the knowledge or skill required for taking the responsibility for their own health.

So it would be much better for the patient (and for the ophthalmologist) if we could somehow (posters with the anatomy of the eye and eyelids or fact sheets) make the patient understand what happening to his eye.

Great questions.. I can tell you that computer tutorials for certain eye diseases are out there, although I wish I could tell you where to get them. One private practice ophthalmologist I worked with had a computer with the software in every exam room- if the patient was a glaucoma suspect for example, she would sit in front of the computer screen with the patient and click on the tutorial to show the patient how pressure builds in the anterior chamber (it used helpful pictures, cartoons, diagrams, etc).

Here is a cool example of a cartoon tutorial on cataract surgery:

http://www.clinicareinoso.com/conditns/qx_cat.htm

Keep clicking on the "next" button to go through the steps.

 

[toulouselautrec]

I think it depends on the patient population. Our resident clinic patients either are not particularly interested in reading up on their condition, are not educated enough to care or have no access to the Internet and other resources. On the other end of the spectrum, I worked in a private practice before medical school and patients would come in with printouts from the Internet about their central serous chorioretinopathy.

I've tried giving out pamphlets on glaucoma and diabetic retinopathy. Unfortunately I haven't been able to get feedback from these patients. I think with our particular set of patients, they're just not big readers.

But I do find them useful: check out the patient education sheets available free on MDConsult. They have it in other languages. In fact I taught myself a fair amount of ophthalmology terms in Spanish by reading them on my own.

And I do think a model eye or an eye chart is helpful, especially when explaining the concept of narrow angles. Ask your local drug rep if he/she can score you a model eye or cataract eye chart. Also at one of our clinics someone dug up some really old AAO videos for patient education. We started playing them in the waiting room, and people do watch them. It's hard to read something when you're progressively blurred as your pupils dilate in the waiting room with no reading glasses.

As I've found in resident clinic, with our patients, the best thing is a face-to-face discussion, using simple terms. It takes time...and unfortunately in private practice you just don't have a lot of it.

 

[Andrew_Doan]

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/eyesandvision.html