Creative educational resource to share real life patient stories with eye care students: humanising health care
Sharing real-life mental health stories from people with lived experience of visual impairment with trainee professional eye care students.
By 2030, 2.7M people in the UK will suffer from untreatable vision impairment, mainly due to eye conditions associated with old age. Sight loss is a significant disability, associated with loss of independence and social isolation. As a result, the prevalence of depression and anxiety are high in this population, but often go unrecognised and untreated and can lead to poor rehabilitation outcomes.
Previous research by our School of Optometry and Vision Sciences showed that the prevalence of depression in UK patients with visual impairment is amongst the highest for any patient group (43%) - including cancer - and 75% of those with depression were not receiving any treatment. Findings highlighted the need to establish an integrated pathway of care for a population that had previously received little formal mental health support.
A key finding of the research was that eye care professionals were reluctant to discuss mental health, partly because they didn’t view it as part of their role or core training. This highlighted the need to incorporate education on the psychological impact of sight loss and support pathways earlier within undergraduate and postgraduate education.
This pilot project funded the production of creative educational resources to share with eye care students in seven higher education institutions across the UK (e.g. optometry, dispensing optician, and orthoptist students). A series of short film clips were produced sharing real-life stories from people with lived experience of visual impairment, explaining how sight loss impacted their mental health and wellbeing.
Project partners included Anglia Ruskin University, CamSight, Huddersfield University, Aston University, Ulster University, University of Manchester, NHS Education for Scotland and Film4.
An evaluation revealed that course leaders felt more justified and confident in addressing mental health when presenting real-life human stories. Students had a greater understanding of how living with sight loss can affect a person’s overall wellbeing, increasing their confidence to address mental health, and had a better understanding of the referral pathways and support available to them.
The creative education film and learning resources have been shared with the remaining 15 higher education universities teaching eye care, ensuring that people with visual impairment are better recognised by their eye care practitioners as experiencing poor mental wellbeing - resulting in referrals for appropriate support and improving care and rehabilitation outcomes.
