A team at Heartlands Hospital has created a colourful comic to encourage diabetes patients to attend regular eye screening appointments.

To celebrate World Diabetes Day this Saturday, the Hospital’s Diabetic Eye Screening team came up with the idea of producing a comic to encourage younger patients and patients with learning disabilities to attend appointments, as they are often fearful of attending or don’t understand the importance of regular screening.

They took photos of the team walking through the appointment process and Stacey Barbaccia, one of the retinal screeners, illustrated the comic using the photos.

The result is a bright and fun comic that simply explains the retinal screening process – from receiving your appointment letter to making sure you have someone to give you a lift home after.

Dr Alexander Wright, consultant physician at Heartlands Hospital said: “Diabetic eye disease is a leading cause of blindness in the UK and patients are encouraged to attend regular screenings so any problems can be picked up early.

With nearly 20% of patients in Birmingham not attending annual screening appointments, we thought the comic would be a great way of showing how straightforward the screening procedure is.  Early detection and monitoring of diabetic eye disease is effective and is available to anyone with diabetes aged 12 and over. It’s important for all diabetes patients to have their eyes checked and I would urge anyone with diabetes not to miss their chance. Please make sure you get your free annual screening.”

The diabetic eye screening programme at Heartlands Hospital covers Birmingham, Solihull and the Black Country.

For more information about the team please contact: john.sandford@heartofengland.nhs.uk or balwant.dass@heartofengland.nhs.uk

Published: 12.11.15