Project Description

Background: The patient voice is considered to be essential to understanding ophthalmic disease and its impact on patients’ lives. The first Patient Voice in Ophthalmic Research Workshop assessed how the patient voice was viewed in research.

Approach: Delegates of the workshop voted the patient voice was very important in research; however, currently, the patient voice has little influence over guiding research priorities.

Intended Benefits

Patient outcomes: It is assumed that the outcomes of the workshop survey would guide the development of ophthalmic research to prioritise and better incorporate the patient voice. By doing so, patient outcomes would benefit.

Environmental, Financial, Social: By increasing the influence of the patient voice in research, the relationship between the patient, researchers, and clinicians could improve. Further monitoring could be done to assess environmental and financial impacts.

Potential Barriers

Challenges to actualising the goals of this project:

• Training for researchers to better incorporate the patient voice in research

Key Aspects of the Project

This project focuses on how the patient voice are treated in ophthalmic research and seeks to improve the reception and use of the patient voice.