DiPP

Improving the DIagnostic accuracy of referrals for Papilloedema (DiPP) from primary to secondary care: the development of clinical guidelines and educational materials 

Summary

Regular eye tests are important because they can pick-up serious sight and health problems. For example, brain tumours can cause nerve swelling at the back of the eyes and an eye test may be the first time it's picked-up. Nowadays, many GPs lack the confidence or equipment to diagnose eye problems. They often suggest people with headaches or sight problems should visit their optician for an eye test. If something wrong is picked-up, GPs will refer the patient to hospital eye specialists. Optometrists work at optician practices; they're health professionals who can pick-up eye problems, but as they're not medically trained doctors, they don't always know the right thing to do when patients have non-eye related problems. Because of the gaps in knowledge and skills between GPs and optometrists, more people are referred to hospital than necessary, causing undue stress and anxiety. At the same time, people who have serious health problems, like brain tumours, wait longer for appointments, leading to diagnosis and treatment delays. The aim of this project is to help GPs, optometrists, and other health professionals to diagnose problems like nerve swelling and improve the experience of patients referred to hospital. From the start of this project, we've worked with two established patient and public advisory groups (brain tumour patients and people from the general public who use community eye services). With this patient and public involvement, we shall write clear guidelines and provide training and educational materials to support them. We're already speaking to different health professionals working in hospitals, opticians, and GP practices across the country to find out what extra training or equipment could help improve their confidence to pick-up nerve swelling. We're also comparing different eye equipment to see how well they pick-up nerve swelling. Based on what we find, we plan to work with different health professionals to write clear guidelines, training, and educational resources (webinars, workshops, seminars, leaflets, and a website) that are tailored to them. Various professional bodies have offered to help us. Our patient and public advisory groups will help us write simple, non-technical versions of the guidelines and educational resources as well as regular updates on our progress to post on our website and social media. Next, we'll seek further funding to share our guidelines and educational materials with patients and health professionals nationally. We'll share them with everyone involved, including policymakers, charities and the public through government and professional groups. With help from our patient and public advisory groups, we'll give talks at national meetings, publish articles and policy briefings in health and professional journals and the media. We'll find out what people think of them, their effect on patient care and their affordability for the NHS.

Further Information

https://www.fundingawards.nihr.ac.uk/award/NIHR204231