Role of Teachers in Pediatric Eyecare

It is an amazing day today, the weather has been great (well raining a lot but I love the rain so yeah, great), work has been well ok, exhausting but still cool and the holidays which began yesterday (although I had to work yesterday), is going well so far too.

So I thought, hey, this is a good time to learn and share with the wonderful members of this noble community and so here I am as I always do, about to rattle about the eye and hope that someone learns a thing or two that would impact their lives or the lives of their siblings or wards or neighbors, etc. Ok so let's do eye...

So this writeup today was inspired by one of my patients well not technically my patient because it was my patient's mother but I think you get the point right? She brought her daughter in for eye care and I was so proud and happy that she decided to do that, from our conversation I came to understand that the child was reported by the teachers to be having some form of visual difficulties in school.

And being the good mother that she is, she took it seriously, took it up, and brought the child in for care. Now don't get me wrong, the teachers are the heroes just that the writeup was inspired by the mother because she brought the ward in without delay as soon as she got the message from her teachers.

The good news was that the child's issue wasn't much of a big deal medically, something that had an easy fix she is happy and smiling and I am certain that she is going to do great and better in school, but then it got me thinking and I remembered some few other articles I read way back in school that was exploiting this path and I wanted to speak us all, I am certain some of us are teachers and could help our student immensely.

Even if you are not a teacher, you could still help your friend or neighbor's child or something. So what we are exploiting today is the role of the teacher in pediatric eye care. I hope you enjoy the read.

Teachers are some of the most important people in all of our lives and they are mostly the second priority for kids in school thus their parents or ward come first then their teachers. Teachers are crucial in molding a child's character and human relations; sometimes their teachings may exceed their parents.

And the fact that students of kids get to spend a greater portion of their time in school and hence with their teachers means that they are in a better position to identify issues, physically, medically, psychologically, etc, with our children. And so personally I believe that kids who may have eye issues may best be picked up by their teachers to aid them.

And so I want to share these few tips that can help you look out for kids who may have vision difficulties in school so you could recommend to their wards and eye exams just like what my patient's teachers did for her.

• Prefers to Only Read and not Play with Peers

Most kids who may be myopic and have their myopia quite substantial enough tend to have their distance vision quite blurred or bad, so they always lose or mess up when they have to play with their peers. Because of that, they prefer to be on their own or even better be engrossed in a book somewhere.

Why? Because their vision is excellent at near and so they find comfort in reading than doing other curricular activities, besides they do not have to be mocked by their peers when they fail which could be psychologically damaging. And so if you notice this among your students you could recommend a visit to the eye doctor in their wards. Please note that some people are just introverts and love reading, not all are myopic.

• Tend to copy from their friend's notes instead of the board

When kids have refractive errors they tend to have issues with their distance vision and yes this applies even to longsightedness. When hyperopia is substantial enough once vision both distance and near severely compromised, they would not be able to see the board clearly even though they may be on the first row of seats.

To help compensate for this, they tend to copy from their peers what the teacher puts on the board. This tends to hurt their academics and a lot of times parents may develop the mindset that their kids are daft when they are not, the only issue is they cannot see well as others and so they may not even like going to school anymore. Please recommend a visit to the eye doctor if you notice this as a teacher.

• Gets Headaches quite often and may have difficulty concentrating in class

Students who may have difficulties concentrating in class could have ADHD however in this case I am looking at the possibility of a binocular vision anomaly. This comes in different folds and cannot be explored in detail in this post, however, if the student tends to get headaches after reading they could be a candidate.

Hyperopes also tend to get headaches a lot when they concentrate on the board for long hours, and near work worsens their case. Also, students who may have accommodative issues would likely complain of blurry vision after reading for a while or may occasionally report that the words break into two. All these are signs to look out for in binocular vision anomalies and dysfunctions. So if you are a teacher and you notice any of these, please recommend a visit to the eye doctor.

In conclusion, teachers have so much to offer their kids and I say this not only in the terms of teaching, educating, and enlightening but looking out for some of these peculiarities that could mean all the difference to these children when they get medically diagnosed and a permanent solution given to them.

_{image by Hive account@nattybongo}

And so as I said at the beginning of the write-up I do hope that this helps someone out there and that my readers pick a thing or two that may impact someone's life tomorrow. It was a pleasure coming your way today and I wish you a wonderful weekend and a fruitful holiday.

Further Reading

_{Panda, L., Das, T., Nayak, S., Barik, U., Mohanta, B. C., Williams, J., Warkad, V., Tapas Kumar, G. P., & Khanna, R. C. (2018). Tribal Odisha Eye Disease Study (TOES # 2) Rayagada school screening program: efficacy of multistage screening of school teachers in the detection of impaired vision and other ocular anomalies. Clinical ophthalmology (Auckland, N.Z.), 12, 1181–1187. https://doi.org/10.2147/OPTH.S161417.}

_{Reddy, S., Panda, L., Kumar, A., Nayak, S., & Das, T. (2018). Tribal Odisha Eye Disease Study # 4: Accuracy and utility of photorefraction for refractive error correction in tribal Odisha (India) school screening. Indian Journal of Ophthalmology, 66(7), 929–933. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijo.IJO_74_18.}

_{Crippa, J., Flaherty, M., & Silveira, S. (2022). Towards a national preschool vision screening program. Journal of Paediatrics and child health, 58(6), 948–952. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpc.15971.}

_{Vongsachang, H., Callan, J., Kretz, A. M., Wahl, M., Mukherjee, M. R., Neitzel, A., Friedman, D. S., & Collins, M. E. (2022). Teacher and school staff perspectives on their role in school-based vision programs. Canadian Journal of ophthalmology. Journal canadien d'ophtalmologie, 57(6), 381–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcjo.2021.06.011}