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Cost of sight test, pressure to buy spectacles and physical closeness among patients' bugbears
Public perceptions research from the GOC reveals common sources of patient discomfort about visiting an optometrist
17 July 2019
The latest public perceptions research, based on interviews with 2000 UK adults, was presented at the GOC Council meeting (10 July, London).
The report reveals that most (59%) patients surveyed had not felt uncomfortable during a visit to the optometrist.
However, among those who had experienced discomfort, 15% reported feeling uncomfortable because of pressure to purchase spectacles or contact lenses while 13% highlighted the cost of the sight test as the reason for their unease.
Other issues included fear of being diagnosed with an eye problem (10%), an aversion to being touched or someone coming close to their eyes (9%), the pressure to book an eye test (7%), being told that they need glasses (7%) and having someone physically close to them during the eye test (6%).
GPs are still first port of call for eye problems
When asked what action patients would take if they woke up with an eye problem, 32% said they would go to a GP while 25% said they would visit an optometrist.
The proportion of survey respondents who would visit their optometrist was higher in Wales (33%), Scotland (34%) and Northern Ireland (28%) than in England (20%).
Reasons given by patients for not visiting an optometrist first included that they might not be seen by an optometrist on the same day, that an optometrist could not prescribe the right medication or that they did not have the right treatment expertise.
When asked how they would classify optometrists, survey respondents most commonly chose a combination of a healthcare service and retailer (46%), compared to those who selected healthcare service (31%) or retailer (20%) alone.
Frequency of visits
The majority of survey respondents (69%) had visited an optometrist in the past two years.
Those who were more likely to have visited an optometrist within this time frame were female respondents, older respondents and those who lived in Northern Ireland and Wales.
Of those surveyed, 6% said that they had never visited an optometrist while 10% said that they had been to an optometrist more than five years ago.
Patients continued to have high levels of satisfaction in the service that they received through optometrists, with 96% saying that they were fairly or very satisfied with the optometrist who conducted their eye test and 94% satisfied with their overall experience at the optical practice.
Only 6% of respondents had complained about the service they received at an optometrist.
Of those who had something go wrong during their visit to the optometrist, 58% of patients had received an apology compared to 41% who had not.
Image credit: Laurence Derbyshire
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Comments (3)
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Emily McCormick, OT editor02 August 2019
Dear Nick and Careless,
Many thanks for your interest in the story, we have added a link to the GOC's report to the story so you can read more. The report can also be found in full on the GOC's website within the following section: https://www.optical.org/en/news_publications/Publications/policy-and-research-papers.cfm
Thank you,
Emily
Report Like 206
careless30 July 2019
I rarely agree with Mr Rumney and even more rarely post comments but this time is an exception. This is such a vague report as to be meaningless and leaves me with more questions than answers from what could be an interesting independent insight. Could we have more detail please and a link to the original research paper.
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Nicholas Rumney24 July 2019
Could we have a more detailed critique of this poor research ? The terminology is deliberately misleading and the use of a non existent generic term with no legal status "optician" is highly counterproductive and the reasons given a mix of laziness and mendacity. Opticians do not conduct sight tests; optometrists do. The demographics questioned are NOT representative of those who have signs of symptoms of eye problems nor are they of those who attend an optometrist. Less than 1/3rd of those questioned are over 64. we all know the demographic gap between 16-50 where the incidence of eye disease or vision loss is minimal. Maybe the AOP could commission some proper research. This sort of thing will not move us into the realms of taking on non surgical care.
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