Domiciliary: Keeping it close to home

Domiciliary eye care involves the provision of eye examinations and related services within a patient’s home environment. The ideal for domiciliary optometrists is to provide an eye examination as close as possible to that available in a well-appointed consulting room. What are the key challenges in meeting this high standard?  

‘I don’t think there are any specific clinical challenges to domiciliary work at the moment,’ says Kejal Shah, domiciliary optometry partner at Specsavers. ‘We see a wide variety of patients across all age groups, and, in terms of conditions, it is all the normal ones typically seen in community practice. Cataracts, glaucoma and age-related macular degeneration are the most common conditions. The general challenge for making any domiciliary visit is that you don’t know the test environment. You don’t know the set-up required until you get in. So, you need to be flexible and ready to adapt.’