The emotional experiences of patients following removal of the eye (enucleation or evisceration)

Abstract

There is a growing recognition that removal of an eye may cause a significant impact on a person's body image and her or his role in society; and may evoke a variety of emotional responses. The loss of an eye does not only signal disfigurement, it also means a loss of a body part and a vital sense; that of sight. Without vision, individuals have difficulty communicating. The emotional responses to this loss many a times, go unrecognized as the doctors and nurses who are in close contact with the patient at this time are not necessarily prepared to provide emotional care. This study seeks to address this gap by identifying the emotional impact of loss of an eye and sight on people's lives and the implication it has for health care workers, especially nurses. The eliciting of the different feelings and experiences of these patients can provide information for the formulation and design of protocols for holistic health care management.

A non-experimental exploratory and descriptive design was used to conduct In-depth conversational interviews with seven purposively selected participants who had enucleation or evisceration between 2000 and 2005. Information-rich data yielded findings that clearly stressed the need for greater sensitization to the problem. All the participants expressed shock at the final diagnosis of enucleation or evisceration even if this was on their request. Patients wanted to know about the operation and its outcome, the prosthesis, how will it look like and its fit. Findings indicate that answers to these questions were not provided. Patients were not adequately emotionally prepared pre-operatively and were therefore not appropriately cared for post-operatively. Families were not satisfactorily involved and as such were not in a position to provide emotional support that the patients needed

The recommendation was that a study to explore the health care team's knowledge in the psychological and emotional management of patients in crisis should be conducted as a benchmark for further training.