Question

A client has just been diagnosed with glaucoma and will be taking two different eye drops in the same eye as directed. What should the nurse teach the client and family?

Answer 1

Patient teaching

1. Before and after eye drops administration hand wash is necessary
2. So be sure to place it on a clean surface such as fresh tissue. If you do have to clean the bottle tip because of accidental contamination, use a clean tissue or a rubbing alcohol pad.

3. Close the bottle after each use too, as open bottles are more easily contaminated.

4. Avoid keeping an eye drop bottle in your pocket, the car, or in direct sunlight where it can get hot.

5. Eye drops can be given with lay down or head tilt back position

6. Eye drops can be given on eyeball or at the corner(pink -reddish corner near to the nose ) if it fell on outside or on eyelashes.s it must be administrated again.

7 During administration, eyelashes can be kept upwards and lower lid can be kept slightly downwards by pinky finger

8. After instilling the drop eyes must be closed for a minute

9. Many of the eye drops used for glaucoma treatment are irritating to the eye, and some eye drops also burn when they are instilled. You can use artificial tears BEFORE you instill your glaucoma eye drops if your doctor also prescribed this.

10. DON'T USE TWO DIFFERENT EYE DROPS AT THE SAME TIME.You must wait at least 30 minutes between administering each type of eye drops.Using two different eye drops one after the other can reduce their efficacy.

11. Always track the expiry date of the drug

12.Eye drops prescribed for the treatment of glaucoma are medical drugs – some may cause adverse reactions in some people. Discuss any noticeable side effects with us or your doctor.