5.1. Guidelines For Understanding Community Perspectives: Eye & Vision Care Toolkit

Eye & Vision Care Toolkit
5. Understanding Community Perspectives
5.1. Guidelines for Understanding Community Perspectives
WHAT? This list of questions may provide a useful guide for the sorts of things you might want to ask
patients or members of the community who access eye care through your health centre.
WHO? Who you chose to speak with will depend on which priority improvement areas your health
service identifies. For example, it may be for diabetes eye care, access to hospital care (e.g. cataract
surgery), or general access to eye care check-ups for the whole community. You could also look at
doing this for either your individual health service (your own clients), or across a broader region if there
are similar issues that need to be understood.
WHY? We know the eye care pathway can be disjointed: people can “drop out” of the pathway along
the way, meaning they don’t receive the treatment they need which puts them risk of vision loss. By
listening to patient and community voices, we can understand what helps them engage with health
services, and what makes it difficult for them to be actively involved in eye care. This is really important
for us to know, if we are going to make changes to how we deliver or promote eye care that responds
to community needs. The patient perspective is important for the continuous quality improvement
process.
Eye and Vision Care Toolkit - 5. Understanding Community Perspectives | 5.1. Guidelines for Understanding Community Perspectives 1
Step 1 – chat with some patients
 Think about what aspect of eye care you most want to find out about, and select some patients to
invite to have a chat, for example this could be people:
 with diabetes
 who have cataracts or have had cataract surgery
 who need glasses to see clearly
 who have never had an eye exam before
 Work out the best way to talk with these patients, e.g. client liaison officers, Aboriginal Health
Practitioners or other people who are independent from the eye care program should chat with
patients, rather than people involved in eye care.
 Refer to the sample questions for the types of questions you might like to ask. We recommend
you try to talk with an equal mix of males and females, say about 5 male and 5 female patients, to
get a good picture of community perspectives on eye care.
 As you chat with patients, take down some notes as they answer your questions.
Sample questions:
1. Do you reckon it’s important to go get your eyes checked?
a. If YES, why?
b. If NO, why not?
2. Have you had an eye check before?
3. Is there anything that makes it difficult for you to get your eyes checked?
4. What sort of things make it easier for you to get your eyes checked?
5. Do you reckon the diabetes can affect your eyes? (N/A if person doesn’t have diabetes)
a. If YES, can you describe how it can affect your eyes?
6. If you need glasses to see clearer, do you think it’s easy or difficult to get glasses?
7. If you’ve ever been to hospital for eye care how did you feel about going to hospital?
Step 2 – understand the results
 Once you’ve spoken with some patients, take the time to look through all the notes you made.
You might like to do this with some other people from your health service, including people who
work in eye care.
 Make sure you keep all patient information confidential. The names of the patients should not
be written down, and it is important patients are told this when they are invited to have a chat.
 Look at your notes to see what are the things that keep coming up – these are the main ‘themes’.
For example, it could be things like:
 things people know or don’t know about their eyes
 reasons people are not accessing eye care
 things that patients say are helping them access eye care
Step 3 – community-directed solutions
 Once you have listed the main ‘themes’, pick out the things that it’s important to find out a bit
more about – things to get patient and community guidance on, in order to improve eye care
services for them.
 This is the important part! We don’t just want to know what patients and communities
understand about their eye care, we want to find out ways to help them access eye care more or
receive the treatment they need.
 So the next step is to invite community members to meet with you to share their ideas on ways to
help eye care work better for them. It would make sense to invite all the patients you first spoke
with, and open the invitation to others. Including your health service board (if you have a
community directed board) is another good idea.
 This may come up with ideas around things like:
 when and where eye care services are delivered
 who delivers eye care services
 how more people could access eye care
 what the community needs to know about eyes and eye care
 what sort of eye health promotion is needed
 other ways to protect peoples’ eyes, outside of eye care (e.g. food and exercise)
 Having some people from the eye care system at that discussion would be helpful, because they can work
out with the community how those things can be put into place.

5.1. Guidelines For Understanding Community Perspectives: Eye & Vision Care Toolkit

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

5.1. Guidelines For Understanding Community Perspectives: Eye & Vision Care Toolkit

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Description:

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

5.1. Guidelines For Understanding Community Perspectives: Eye & Vision Care Toolkit

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Eye & Vision Care Toolkit

5. Understanding Community Perspectives

5.1. Guidelines for Understanding Community Perspectives

b. If NO, why not?

2. Have you had an eye check before?

a. If YES, can you describe how it can affect your eyes?

You might also like