Care Home Week 18: Guest blog from Visioncall

A blog from Visioncall on caring for our sight and boosting engagement with the world around us.

#carehomeweek

Be at one with your surroundings!

A new lease of life.

It’s so easy to take our vision for granted.

Vision is a key sense in helping us better understand and engage with the world around us.

From taking part in your favourite hobbies to eating food, your sight plays a big role in how you undertake and enjoy activities or even basic daily tasks.

Figures from Future Sight Loss UK reveal that there are 1 in 5 people over 75 in the UK living with some form of sight loss – and this figure rises to 1 in 2 for those over the age of 90.

Poor vision can result in increased falls, isolation, depression and lack of engagement with the individual’s surroundings.

Even if your sight is poor, there’s always room for improvement through good eye care to help you see better and live better.

A regular sight test can help to minimise incidents through improved vision and treatment or management of any eye health problems before they cause damage to a person’s sight.

Sight can also be improved through knowing whether or not glasses are needed or a change in prescription.

However, large changes in a prescription must be avoided as it’s more difficult for elderly people to adapt to new lenses than younger people and can cause disorientation and poor depth perception.

Disorientation and poor depth perception create a cycle of falls, reluctance, isolation and avoidance from activities and living in general.

Good eye care also includes making sure glasses are clean, current and correct to your latest prescription as this allows us to make the most of our sight.

Clean glasses make it possible for someone to participate in their surroundings unhindered as there aren’t unnecessary floating marks and smudges everywhere they look.

This can prevent an individual from isolating themselves as clean glasses ensure clarity and improved vision of what they can see, which is important if they have an eye condition which restricts or limits vision.

Small adaptions to a person’s care for their sight makes a world of difference and it’s something we’re all guilty of taking for granted.

Visioncall believe all individuals should have the opportunity to engage with the world around them and more importantly, enjoy it.

By making the most of our vision regardless of how much or little we can see, there is an endless world of independence, opportunities and memories.

You can make this a possibility for someone you care for or care about, starting with a visit from an optician.

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