Severely visually handicapped people at general practitioners

Overview

Aim:
To find out the experience of severely visually handicapped (SVH) people, General Practitioners (GPs) and their nurses (Ns) in mutual communication. To obtain general information on how the GPs are acquainted with methods of working effectively with the SVH and to learn SVH respondents’ opinion on it. To point out the most common problems of blind peoples’ everyday life, ingrained prejudices and mistakes that sighted people can make in helping those with little or no sight.

Methods:
Ten GPs working in Hradec Králové were asked to fill in an anonymous questionnaire and a recorded interview was done with five SVH people.

Results:
Eight out of the ten GPs have already seen the SVH patient at their surgeries. All of the GPs (n = 10) correctly answered a question about the principles of assisting and guiding SVH person but only one knew 2 organisations that help blind or visually impaired people in Hradec Králové. All of the SVH respondents (n = 5) said that there was a good relationship between them and their GP, but they mentioned communication problems with Nurses. Four of the five SVH respondents think that medical staff should undergo further training in this field. The most prevalent problems blind and visually impaired people have to face are orientation, communication with sighted people and a lack of information. They most often find that people underestimate their abilities.

Conclusion:
According to our research, communication between Severely Visually Handicapped people and their General Practitioners has been satisfactory, contrary to communication with Nurses at their surgeries.

Key words:
severely visually handicapped, communication, general practitioner