Patients report better understanding of compliance after glaucoma education program

Issue: June 10, 2009

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — The majority of patients in a glaucoma education program reported that it taught them the importance of compliance, a study found.

Marie-Josée Fredette, MD, and colleagues devised the glaucoma education program, using a multidisciplinary approach to improve patients' understanding and awareness of the disease.

"Participants expressed a high level of satisfaction with the content of the education program," Dr. Fredette and colleagues said in a poster study at the Association for Research in Vision and Ophthalmology meeting.

They conducted six focus groups of 39 participants to assess effectiveness of the program at 2 weeks and 6 months.

At 2 weeks and 6 months after the program, 100% of participants and 95.2% of participants, respectively, found it "adequate and responding to their needs."

Two weeks after the program, 88.9% of participants said the most important information that they received was the importance of compliance; 85.7% of participants reported that at 6 months.

At 2 weeks, 83.3% of patients reported loss of information; 71.4% reported that at 6 months.

This poster made use of focus groups, which can be a very effective technique to achieve a more in-depth understanding of complex topics, in order to assess the response of participants to a glaucoma education program. It is encouraging both that the large majority of subjects agreed that compliance with therapy was the most important information that they received and that this majority was maintained through 6 months after the program. The satisfaction expressed with the appropriateness of the program’s content is also a good sign. It would be interesting to know the impact of the program on actual compliance over the course of the study, and also whether the loss of information reported by participants was documented with any sort of testing.

– Nathan G. Congdon, MD, MPH
OSN Glaucoma Board Member