Eye health (health and wellbeing needs in South Tyneside)

A stakeholder workshop was held before the project started to consider what some of the issues might be.

During the course of the EHNA, 4 surveys were carried out, both online and on paper, to gain the views of, respectively, service users, GPs, Optometrists and Opthalmologists.

Sight Services also provided both one-to-one support and facilitated workshops to maximise engagement of people with sight loss in the needs assessment.

The results are summarised below:

Service user views

• Care at the Sunderland Eye Infirmary is rated as very good or excellent.
• Users value the provision of the voluntary sector very highly, and when asked, these are the services that are most important to them.
• The need for improved access to low vision services for South Tyneside was clearly expressed in the stakeholder forum, survey returns and focus groups. Gateshead seen as a good model
• Many service users and professionals in primary care cite the journey from South Tyneside to Sunderland as a serious problem for accessing care
• Loss of sight is a bereavement and there is not enough recognition of this, nor is there appropriate emotional wellbeing support
• There were mixed views amongst service users about how well services worked together, support for more local services and for more service integration was a common theme.

Professional views

• GPs were able to identify the more medical risk factors, but there was a significant deficit in knowledge of lifestyle risk factors. GPs felt there was a need for more local provision of services.
• Optometrists also felt that more local provision of services were available, and that better information could be exchanged by health professionals.