Abstract
Purpose :
Patient education is a critical component of post-surgical care. Adequately educating patients after eye surgery can be time consuming, possibly leading to clinic delays and impacting the care of other patients in the clinic. We performed an exploratory study to determine if educational videos are comparable to face-to-face education in terms of time required for the visit and knowledge retained by the patient.
Methods :
This prospective study consisted of 46 patients undergoing their first eye surgery, either cataract removal or glaucoma surgery (trabeculectomy or tube shunt) in a single glaucoma specialist’s clinic in a tertiary academic medical center. Patients were enrolled on their first post-operative visit. Patients were randomized to undergo standard post-operative patient education or view an educational video of the surgeon explaining precautions, medications, and expectations for the post-operative period. Patients who viewed the video then received an abbreviated version of the standard patient education during their clinic visit with the glaucoma specialist. The time spent face-to-face with the glaucoma specialist was measured for each patient. A survey containing ten surgery-specific knowledge-based questions was given to a subset of patients to assess patient understanding of the post-operative instructions and returned in a pre-stamped and addressed envelope by mail.
Results :
Twenty-one patients were randomized to the standard education group and 25 patients were randomized to the video group. The mean age of patients in this study is 66.5 (56% females). Thirty-six patients underwent cataract surgery, 8 tube shunt, and 2 trabeculectomy. The time required for the face-to-face visit with the glaucoma specialist was 5.31 minutes for the video group, compared to 6.10 minutes for the control group (p = 0.26). A subset of 33 patients were given the survey and 16 responded. The average score was 8.3 for the standard education group and 8.6 for the video group (p = 0.75).
Conclusions :
These results demonstrate that educational videos for post-operative patients are comparable to face-to-face patient education both in terms of time required for the visit and patient retention of the information. This study was limited by a small sample size, and further evaluation of these patient education methods is warranted for wider application.
This abstract was presented at the 2022 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Denver, CO, May 1-4, 2022, and virtually.