ERN-EYE educational video for healthcare professionals: how to welcome visually impaired people to the hospital?
date: 28/04/2020
"Introduce yourself when entering a room, touch the hand before shaking it, describe the position of the food on the meal tray”. Here are some tips that blind and partially sighted people have given during discussion workshops held with them. The purpose of these meetings? Create a video to raise awareness among hospital staff about welcoming visually impaired people.
Based on SENSGENE, an original initiative from the French national network for rare sensory diseases, ERN-EYE launched a video to guide healthcare professionals in how to welcome visually impaired patients at the hospital. This educational video was created to address patients’ expectations and improve their experience in the hospital setting.
SENSGENE worked on this project with several French associations of visually impaired people. Patients actively contributed in this project through five focus groups (workshops) which collected testimonies and needs from visually impaired people and healthcare professionals. ERN-EYE collaborated with SENSGENE to translate and adapt the video in English. This version was reviewed and validated by our English European Patient Advocacy Group (ePAG) representative.
The video is a 3-minute motion design video. It is divided into three independent parts. It deals with common situations related to the care activity: the different types of visual impairment, reception in a hospital centre, consultation, moves and orientation in a hospital room. This fits perfectly with the needs which the patients reported in the focus groups. An evaluation carried out after health professionals had watched the video showed that 80% of them improved their knowledge.