Strategy for developing an evidence-based transdisciplinary vision rehabilitation team approach to treating vision impairment

Background: Many individuals with vision impairment experience significant loss of the ability to perform daily living activities, which often results in a further decline and loss of quality of life. Appropriate rehabilitation of the population with vision impairment has the potential to both improve individual abilities for health and personal management as well as maximize utilization of available health care resources. Methods: The case for an evidence-based model for the vision rehabilitation health care team as a medical rehabilitation program is presented. The recommended strategy has 3 main components: development of a consensus team clinical practice guideline leading to a future evidence-based team guideline for vision rehabilitation; evaluation and measurement of the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of the involved vision rehabilitation professionals before and after implementation of the new paradigm; and measurement of outcomes that estimate the effects of the proposed paradigm on patient care by measuring both the improvement in visual ability of the patient and the economic impact of the model on optometric practice. Conclusions: Development of a state-of-the-art evidence-based transdisciplinary team model guideline will facilitate improvement in the quality of life of individuals with diseases that result in chronic vision impairment.