Low vision: Knowledge,attitude,and practice among optometrists in India

Abstract

In a developing country like India, affordable eye care services are limited and less developed. Moreover, a general lack of awareness about proper vision care leads to a rise in the number of individuals with visual impairment. In developing countries like India, the low vision services are still growing. Hence, it becomes necessary to understand the knowledge and practice patterns among optometrists regarding low vision services. This was a cross-sectional study carried out from May 2020 to July 2020 among optometrists across India. The questionnaire was constructed using the information from the already existing literature, and content validity was done through experts in this field. Furthermore, this survey was circulated to 1374 optometrists in the form of Google survey. The participants were able to participate in the survey only after a written informed consent. Analysis was carried out using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences, Version 20.0 (SPSS, Inc., IBM), to report the knowledge, attitude, and practice of the low vision services in India. In total, 280 individuals participated in this survey, and the mean age of the participants was 28 ± 8 years. There were 156 (55.7%) females and 124 (44.3%) males with a response rate of 20.37%. Out of 280 participants, 184 (65.7%) were involved in clinical practice, whereas 96 (34.3%) in optical practice. Lack of accessibility and time were found to be the two major barriers to enhance knowledge in low vision; however, accessibility, lack of awareness, and cost were the hindering factors to practise low vision services among these participants. This study reports that accessibility to the low vision services and awareness about the services are the barriers to uptake of low vision services. Besides this awareness, training programmes and public awareness would effectively contribute to enhance low vision services.