Profile of Visual Functioning as a Bridge between Education and Medicine in the Assessment of Impaired Vision

Purpose: To report on the development of the Profile of Visual Functioning as a framework for information exchange between schools and medical specialists involved in the education or care of children with impaired vision due to brain damage. Methods: The role of vision loss in a child's functioning can be in part assessed by medical services, but in order to meet the needs of early intervention and education, numerous activities and tasks need to be observed during therapies, early intervention activities, and at local and special schools. Result: Information on vision loss can be gathered effectively and shared between medicine and education using well-structured lists of the most important functions, the Profile of Visual Functioning. We describe a common type of list of vision-related functions and activities. Discussion: Cooperation between education and medicine requires development of a common language and agreements on how the large amount of information is collected. A basic list of measurements and observations covers functions of most children and thus gives a firm structure to the information exchange. Conclusions: Lists of functions to be examined and activities to be observed, if used by all stakeholders, may improve the quality of assessments for early intervention and special education. At the same time, schools and hospitals need to jointly arrange further education so that the names of activities start to make sense to doctors and the medical terms to teachers.