Optometry patient education is a vital, but often overlooked component of eye care. It allows your patients to be more educated about their eye disorder, condition, and treatment plan options.

Fortunately, there is no hard and fast blueprint for optometry patient education, which means you can tailor your regimen to the needs of your patients and practice. Let’s take a closer look at optometry patient education and why it’s a win-win scenario for you and your patients.

Optometry Patient Education Helps Them Make More Informed Decisions

Patient education is centered on teaching your patients and providing them with reliable, valuable information they can understand. By offering a patient education regimen, you can help keep your patients more informed. And patients who are informed have a higher level of understanding, which can help reduce anxiety and stress. This can also lead to a strengthened bond and increased level of trust between you and your patients.

Help Your Patients Stick to the Plan

According to research published in the American Journal of Medicine, patient education can substantially improve compliance with prescribed medicine across a vast range of disease severities and conditions. On the other hand, the lack of compliance with physician’s orders is associated with poor clinical outcomes.
It’s simple, the more clearly your patient understands their eye condition or disease, the more likely they will be comfortable with their care. And when patients are comfortable with their plan of care, they will be more likely to adhere to the prescribed regimen.
However, one of the key problems with patient education is discovering the most efficient method of disseminating information and ensuring the info is presented in a way that’s understandable for all patients. Because of this common roadblock, it’s critical to use a variety of optometry patient education resources and tools.

The Key Is Options in Optometry Patient Education Resources

When considering optometry patient education resources, it’s vital to understand that everyone learns differently. Because of this, you should offer your patients access to a range of different types of education mediums. The key is to provide options for engagement throughout their visit and beyond. For instance:

  • You can offer helpful brochures and pamphlets that your patients can use while they are in the waiting room or prior to leaving.
  • You may keep different videos on hand that can be used in the office to explain various eye conditions in Layman’s terms.
  • Guiding your patients toward helpful videos they can view at home is an excellent way to deepen their knowledge about their condition and increase their engagement in the treatment plan.
  • Patient education doesn’t have to be complex. It can be a simple conversation you have in the office that ends with you offering them access to more information from specialty to societies.
  • You may offer information centers and libraries on your practice website where they can learn more about conditions from you — their trusted source.
In either case, the American Medical Association suggests you direct them to outside information regarding their treatment. The AMA states outside societies may help your patients connect with other reliable sources, which can serve as a reliable source itself.

Optometry Patient Education: A Clear Win-Win Scenario

While optometry patient education offers clear benefits for your patients, it also offers substantial benefits for you. For starters, it can help you grow your business! Robust optometry patient education programs will attract patients to you due to increased satisfaction.
When a patient is happy with the service they have received, they are more likely to tell a friend or family member –  who will be inclined to schedule an appointment. In addition, an effective education program can help:

  • Reduce your liability.
  • Increase the adherence to the treatment plan and medication, which helps promote patient-centered care.
  • Help you deliver more efficient healthcare.
  • Help reduce complications while ensuring continuity of care.

Optometry Patient Education Resources

Finding ways to explain relatively complex eye conditions and problems to your patients in a way they can understand can be difficult. However, you do have access to a seemingly endless list of optometry patient education resources and tools to make the task a bit easier, such as:

Contact Keeler Today

If you have equipment needs, Keeler OPhthalmic Instruments has solutions. Contact us today for optometric solutions.