Working with glaucoma patients - prospects for "shared care"

Abstract

Purpose: To investigate the prospects for "shared care" by evaluating to what extent ophthalmic nurses are involved in ophthalmic care decision tasks in the management of glaucoma patients, how well prepared the nurses feel they are for these tasks and their level of satisfaction in those tasks they actually are performing.

Methods: A questionnaire was sent to the ophthalmic nurses at 13 eye clinics in Sweden. The clinics were selected to represent different parts of Sweden as well as university clinics and smaller rural clinics.

Results: A difference was found between clinics regarding the number of tasks independently performed by the ophthalmic nurses and a significant correlation was found between level of participation and satisfaction (p=0.008). The nurses felt prepared for (61/62) and satisfied (58/62) when performing the glaucoma management tasks, and a high and very significant correlation (r=0.96, p= 0.0001) was found between the mean preparedness and satisfaction scores for each of the 14 tasks.

Conclusions: The findings in the study show that the ophthalmic nurses feel prepared for their tasks and regard their involvement in glaucoma care as subjectively satisfactory. These observations support the idea of "shared care" in glaucoma management.