Mark visits Manchester Royal Eye Hospital (MREH) and talks to Karen, a specialist Glaucoma nurse, about how best to put in the eye drops that are used to treat Glaucoma.
Henshaw’s daily living putting in eyedrops welcome to henshaw’s knowledge village today we’re at manchester royal house bill and i’ve got karen who’s a specialist glaucoma nurse and she’s going to tell me stuff i don’t know and all that stuff that you don’t know – so karen tell us a little bit about itself and what you do here i’m gonna call common specialists
Nurses at manchester ohio spittle while we find with glaucoma is first line of treatment he’s often eyedrops and we find that quite a few patients struggle with putting eye drops in from a gamma point of view we know that the intraocular pressure can have an effect on the optic nerve and the visual field so affecting your vision the drops are really important because
They’re prescribed to reduce the pressure so if we’re not using the drops the pressure is going to come off and things are going to continue on so it’s really important that you use your drops as prescribed so we just thought we’d do a bit of a video to try and make things a little bit clearer so that people feel a bit more knowledgeable about putting their eyedrops
In our finding different ways to make it easier and we found that videos help people to remember that what do you mean so but it also helps the rest of the family as well as can kind of go back to that video and it’s really good kind of resource to have mm-hmm as long as the treatment doesn’t change its are always there available for people yeah so so what are the
Best ways what other what are the tips and tricks that you’ve got with the guards okay so first thing you should always do before putting your eye drops in and afterwards as well he’s just make sure you wash your hands properly with soap and water and helps prevent your risk of you know getting infections and things like that i’m especially you’ve had surgery as
Well recently so seem more important more straps are a lot of drops i’ve 28-day life so once you break the seal on the bottle after 28 days he should be changed even if there’s some left it so i was mentioning you get your repeat prescriptions in time if you’re you know using for glaucoma drops especially and you know if you’re going away making sure that you’ve
Planned that you’ve got your prescription and in time so you’re not running out and having a few days where you’ve not got drops other thing as well is just making sure that you check your storage instructions so i’m so like usually i fashion actually needs to be kept in the fridge or anything like that as well if you’re wearing contact lenses i always make sure
You remove the contact lenses before putting your drops in and then don’t put them in for a good 15 minutes afterwards just because it can damage the contact lenses if they’ve got preservatives and things in their eyes i’ll demonstrate a few different ways of putting eye drops in and also there are various drop dispensers available for different kinds of drops so
I can just demonstrate a couple of them yes so we’ve got just a little dummy eye dropper bottle which we can just show you the bog standard way of putting your eye drops in okay so this is what we normally teach people so a course of wash man’s before and yeah and you take one finger pull down your lower lids see you create a little pocket okay and then head back
Looking up to the ceiling and then you would squeeze a drop just into the center of that little pocket and then release like gold close your eye and just press on the corner between your eye and your nose and to help stop the drop flowing through that drainage network there and that helps many maximally sad fact share and you can click just close your eyes as well
Does that work yeah yes so lion eyes closed uneven just pressing on that for a few minutes that can help as well so i saw that you use your overruns kind of died because you know if somebody can’t see too well they can yeah so what we’d like a rest yeah so what we found sometimes is that when we watch patients put eyedrops in is that because it may be a little
Bit unsteady sometimes you can use your other hand as a as a steady yeah and it gives you a bit of distance away from your eye sore the tip of the bottle isn’t touching the eyelashes all the eye because obviously that that can cause a scratch or it can again cause infections so you pull your lid down and you can rest one hand on top of the other and just squeeze
Over your eye so it’s just not actually it gives you a bit of distance away from your eyes i’ve got a little tip and trick about somebody that maybe can’t look up yes alabama yep blind down is a good way doing it as well especially someone’s on the study on the feet as well as because because once you tip ya back your tendency is to kind of go backwards you may
Fall over so it’s good to be sitting down are lying well it’s probably good to practice as well but not with your know when you’re on drops yeah because you give renee quicker but yeah you could use something over the counter you could check with your local pharmacist and see what what you’re able to use just as a practice with you know that doesn’t contraindicate
Yeah yet there’s a few different ways that i want to show you that you can use your eye drops so there’s the study in hand as well so as we were saying about stiff neck aligned oh yeah another way you can use it is by pulling you’ll always pull your lower leg don’t so you can rest it on your eyebrow if you lying flat you can just squeeze it that way yeah you can
Use it on your eyebrow where you back and squeeze that way and there’s another way you can use to put it upside down and rest you and then you for it i’m gonna do it that way or you can do one handed so for people that might struggle with with of an injury to the round miles if there’s not going full use around here keep your little finger pull your leg down and
Then just squeeze so that’s one handed and then of course you can use a mirror as well and just to what you doing you can see where you’re putting your drop there okay with the drop pads and this one’s a feeling feeling of one this one’s attacked quite a lot of different drops so this would fit in like that close it around it put that over the square cut out
Part is where you put your finger to pull down and you rest that i knew broke and then squeeze the big buttons either side and then we’ve also got how do you decide which one is i think it depends on what the problem is so for some patients who struggle with getting it in position over there i so this is a good well whether i’ll go for that really for getting it
In position over the right and it keeps it steady because it’s resting yeah i knew bro yeah it’s also good for if you’ve got problems with arthritis and difficulty school you’d rush because are quite small yes you’re the one that’s available that’s quite a generic one as well it fits quite a different a few different things it’s just this one so that one’s like
Built like an air bath it’s little pinhole to looks right okay so you pull dough and then squeeze but always getting your head right back so that it goes in and then there’s ones for patients that need for you single unit door struts so that just slides in obviously that’s got a lid i’m not going to tear that off you pull down and there does the oval there that
You can see through see pull down her back and squeeze it so it pushes against i’m saying hard so it’s they’re able to squeeze out i think that’s it really with wisdom demonstrating some of their drops that i’ve got thanks kerry and i was absolutely brilliant there’s going to be plenty more videos from this collaboration with manchester royal hospital and hand
Showers and so it’s bye from me and it’s bye from karen by our videos are helping people across the world if you found them useful please donate on our website so we can keep making more videos like this in the future henshaw’s supporting people with sight loss and a range of other disabilities to go beyond expectations
Transcribed from video
How to put in eye drops – tips for those with Glaucoma By Henshaws
