Red-green CVD encompasses deuteranomaly, protanomaly, deuteranopia and protanopia. These X-linked recessive traits are reported to affect between 2-8% of males and 0.5% of females. Whilst many studies have investigated colour vision deficiency in populations, these still represent minute snapshots of populations within a given country, region or across the globe.
Whilst the true prevalence of CVD within the population is likely under-reported, its impact in certain jobs can have serious implications for safety. Numerous professions have CVD screening requirements, such as airline and marine pilots, air traffic controllers and aspects of the armed forces.
The implications and impacts of CVD on the healthcare profession are under-researched. The nature of the field sees colouration of bodily fluids, interpretation of imagery and other samples by colouration, as well as labelling of cables, tubes and stickers with colour to enable professionals to rapidly distinguish between identically shaped objects that are used for different purposes. Blood collection vials are a prime example of where CVD has the potential for impact on patient care. Detection of some patient symptoms may also be impacted/missed where discolouration of the skin in cyanosis, jaundice, pallor or erythema is present. Similarly, blood test strips and urine dipsticks, presence of blood or bile in bodily fluids may present challenges for healthcare professionals with CVD.
With >280,000 registered doctors on the GMC register and an almost equal spilt of male:female (1), that would mean that approximately 11,000 male and 700 female doctors working in the UK have some form of CVD, but how this impacts patient care, or how many of these professionals cope to reduce the risk to patient care and safety is unknown. This is similar in the Health and Care Professions Council register with 26% of >320,000 registrants across the 15 professions they regulate being male, this represents another with a potential >6,400 males involved in patient care who likely have CVD (2,3).
Our group has registered a scoping protocol to review the impact and implications of CVD in the healthcare sector. We are examining what already exists in the published literature, to collate and review this data to articulate a clear position on what the currently recognised impacts are. This will involve utilising a variety of search databases to screen published and grey literature.
Major duties:
- The student will form part of the team who will undertake and support screening for data, data extraction and writing short synopses for relevant material that will form part of at least one published manuscript.
- The student will develop understanding of the scoping review methodology. This will include scientific writing skills, both reducing complex scientific articles into short concise summaries, as well as helping to write some of the findings into a manuscript, or part of a manuscript – depending on rate of progress across the course of their involvement.