Table 4.
Post-injection experience and impact on patient recovery
| Themes/subthemes | Illustrative quotations of patients (PA) and healthcare practitioners (HP) |
| Post-injection experience and impact on patient recovery | ‘Floaters, sometimes spots in the eye that sort of flick around a little bit. But normally after a day or two it wears off… It’s like having a fly in your eye…’ (PA08) |
| ‘And sometimes you have a lot of floaters. It can leave you with a little sort of floating disks, but they are temporary, they go.’ (PA14) | |
| ‘I get a taxi to come home because my vision in the eye that does have the injection is a bit blurry when I go out to the hospital.’ (PA04) | |
| ‘I've had occasions when it waters a lot and occasions when it feels you got sand in your eye.’ (PA03) | |
| ‘…there’s a big black blob…it’s like a black mess.’ (PA06) | |
| ‘Sometimes, you got a feeling of soreness in the eye, a little pain.’ (PA05) | |
| ‘The iodine dries the eye out, so they get discomfort that night and the next day.’ (HP1) | |
| ‘Very often when they come out of the injection, they start blinking or they rub their eyes and this will create a scratch, corneal abrasion. This is very painful once the anaesthetic goes away…’ (HP6) | |
| ‘I have had a headache sometimes. I don't suffer with headaches, never have. But um, I sort of have an ache just by there [demonstrates on side of eye]. I do feel very tired after I've had it done.’ (PA09) | |
| ‘When the numbness wears off, it then starts to feel a bit sore so often.’ (PA11) | |
| ‘Now and then you can have just a slight bleed because…I tend to move my head and I might scratch the eyeball. And that needs more treatment to an extent.’ (PA05) | |
| ‘The aftereffects of the injection I think are worse than the injection itself… Little pain, a little discomfort, a little dryness…It’s only for maybe 24–36 hours and then it’s fine.’ (PA14) | |
| Home remedies for ocular pain | ‘I do not think they need chloramphenicol. I think they just need lubrication…That would improve quite a lot of people’s discomfort afterwards.’ (HP1) |
| ‘If they feel that they would have any discomfort, I will always advise them to take some paracetamol if they wanted to.’ (HP3) | |
| ‘After the injection sometimes, I take a couple of paracetamol.’ (PA05) | |
| ‘When you get home take couple of paracetamol or whatever painkiller you have, couple of hours of sleep and you will be fine…’ (HP5) | |
| Instructions and provision of patient information leaflets | ‘And give warning to the patient that if their pain is increased, floaters, flashes of light reduce the vision.’ (HP4) |
| ‘Tell them about the antibiotics they need to take. So, we give antibiotics [chloramphenicol] for four days after the injection. We give them some leaflets if they need to have, emergency contact numbers and then if everything is okay then there’s no problem, the patient will go home.’ (HP2) | |
| ‘They give these eyedrops [chloramphenicol] which you have to use four times a day for four days. They were of help.’ (PA05) | |
| ‘Sometimes the pressure can go up after the injection and that can give pain… In future, tell them to take Diamox [acetazolamide], a pressure loading tablet before you inject.’ (HP6) | |
| ‘Next day, you get floaty things and think, I hope that’s all right. But then you look at the leaflets and yes, that can happen.’ (PA06) | |
| ‘We will give the antibiotic to take home and the instruction on how they will have it, and a proper leaflet, in case there is any problem when they go home…’ (HP7) | |
| ‘Came home and complied with their instructions…They gave me the antibiotic and used it four times a day for four days.’ (PA13) |