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, four 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.