For the patient in your chair, the consequences of a visual field test aren’t abstract. A driver’s licence might hang in the balance, but so might something just as important: the confidence to walk to the shop alone, or to watch a grandchild playing near the edge of a park without that sense of unease. What’s lost isn’t only sight. It can be spontaneity, and the ease of moving through the world without constantly checking what might have been missed.
Glaucoma is often called the silent thief of sight, but what it tends to steal first is certainty. As vision gradually changes, routines can start to narrow and caution creeps in.
In that moment, when your patient’s world is shifting, support for emotional adjustment and practical adaptation can make all the difference.
Seeway’s Business Development Manager, Michael Angerame – himself an optometrist – said visual field testing carries an emotional weight for many.
“Clinically, it measures function; personally, it can feel like measuring the future.”
But he cautioned that even when vision is defined as ‘stable’, that can mean different things to a clinician and to their patient.
Interventions that address the emotional and practical side of vision loss alongside clinical care have been shown to lead to greater engagement, stronger self-efficacy, and better overall adjustment.
After a visual field test, Mr Angerame said, patients “rarely” remember how many points they missed; they instead find some reassurance in the field loss being stable, or uncertainty if there is some progression.
For a patient, ‘stable’ can be the word that lets their guard down, Mr Angerame explained, when really it’s the time to build strategies, access help, adjust their environment, to stay connected to the things that matter before isolation creeps in to become a bigger problem.
Interventions that address the emotional and practical side of vision loss alongside clinical care have been shown to lead to greater engagement, stronger self-efficacy, and better overall adjustment.1
Humanising Visual Field Loss
For the estimated 70,000 Australians living with permanent vision loss that is serious enough to affect daily life, yet not qualify for funded rehabilitation or support,2 these questions surface: “Will I be able to keep working? Who decides when it’s time to stop driving? How can I use my mobile phone?”. And, perhaps the hardest question of all, which usually surfaces in the small hours when the world is asleep, “Am I going to be OK?”.
None of these are really vision questions. They’re questions of identity, independence, and the slow work of adapting to a changed set of terms. It rarely shows up on a visual field report, but it’s very much part of what glaucoma can feel like to live with.
Humanising visual field loss starts with remembering that behind every test result is someone recalibrating their sense of the world. The care offered – clinically and emotionally – can help, not only in understanding the test but also ensuring that the patient leaves feeling supported for whatever comes next.
Small interventions go a long way: adjusted lighting at home, accessibility settings changed on a phone, or simply someone to talk to about processing the emotional side of the change. Most patients have no idea these things are available, or assume support only kicks in once vision loss is severe.
SeeWay provides practical and emotional support right from the point of diagnosis.
It complements your clinical care with:
- Trusted practical information and resources,
- Help adjusting their phone or computer to make technology more accessible, and
- Access to emotional support and counselling to process the adjustment to living with low vision.
Referrals to SeeWay can be made via Oculo, or simply recommend your patients get connected at seeway.com.au or 1800 SEEWAY (1800 733 929).
Holly Kelly is Media and Communications Manager at SeeWay, leading communications that improve access to trusted information and holistic support for Australians living with low vision.
References
- Luu W, Kalloniatis M, Ly A, et al. A holistic model of low vision care for improving vision related quality of life, Clin Exp Optom. 2020;103(6)733-741. doi: 10.1111/cxo.13054.
- NOUS Group. Unmet needs in low vision: Research report prepared for Guide Dogs NSW/ACT; Sydney Australia; NOUS Group; 2023.
