Changing lives: Low-vision specialist honored for getting vital services to more Veterans

Brenda McGinley, the Milwaukee VA’s Visual Impairment Services Team coordinator, received the Beacon Award from the VA’s National Blind Rehabilitation Service earlier this year.

The award recognizes “commitment to excellence, innovative practices, empathy and compassion, collaboration and teamwork, advocacy, empowerment or safety,” according to Suzi Bloedel, program manager for the Milwaukee VA’s Blind Rehabilitation and Speech Pathology department.

“Brenda has done so much in the two years since she’s been here,” Bloedel said, noting that McGinley’s work has led to a dramatic jump in the number of Veterans receiving blind/low-vision services.

McGinley’s work has included:

• Establishing clinic-to-clinic telehealth services, enabling Veterans in northeastern Wisconsin who are unable to travel to Milwaukee to access vital care.
• Developing educational materials and curating social media content to raise awareness of VA services.
• Providing training and education to staff to further enhance the services provided.

“We are truly fortunate to have Brenda as part of our team, and her efforts have made a lasting difference for our Veterans and staff alike,” said Bloedel, who nominated McGinley for the award.

More Veterans receiving services

McGinley’s work has increased the number of Veterans served from about 520 when she started to 651 now, Bloedel said, noting the increase is especially impressive considering that many of the Veterans qualifying for services are often in the last years of their lives.

“Even though we’ve been losing Veterans due to attrition, we’ve increased that roster by getting new consults and new patients on board,” Bloedel said.

Much of that increase has been in northeastern Wisconsin. While the Green Bay and Appleton clinics offer optometry and ophthalmology services, they don’t have low-vision services, and McGinley found Veterans reluctant or unable to come to Milwaukee.

So she established a telehealth clinic for the area and helped arrange transportation for Veterans. That has more than doubled the number of northeastern Wisconsin Veterans served.

In addition, McGinley works with a variety of providers — from optometrists and occupational therapists to social workers and psychologists — to direct Veterans to these services. 

McGinley said establishing relationships with the Veterans is key.

“Once I meet somebody, I become their vision coordinator for life,” she said. “Every year I reach out to them to make sure they have what they need. … I literally put my number in everybody’s phone so they can call me” if their vision changes and additional adaptive equipment is needed.

An 'invisible disability'

McGinley said she is passionate about advocacy because, according to national statistics, only 8% of people who qualify for low-vision services actually get those services.

“There are thousands of adults out there with vision problems that aren’t getting services,” she said, calling low vision an “invisible disability” because eye care is not integrated into the health care system and is often not noted in a patient’s health care record.

And as a person’s vision worsens, depression can increase, she said.

That’s unfortunate because McGinley said there is easily accessible adaptive equipment and technology that can improve their quality of life.

“The pieces of technology that we can offer are life changing,” she said. “I’ve had people come in here depressed and feeling like their life was over, and then feeling completely renewed.”

Personal connection

McGinley’s passion also stems from personal experience. When her son was 12, he was diagnosed with retinitis pigmentosa, a genetic condition that results in blindness. The family was told that he would be blind by the time he was 18.

But after two years and participation in research studies, it turned out that there had been a misdiagnosis; instead, he had suffered some damage to his eyes from rubella when he was an infant. The result has been some night blindness, but not a progressive condition.

“That gave me a little personal attachment to how devastating it felt and how many life decisions I needed to make,” she said, noting her son is a now 25 and a college graduate. “I learned a lot on that journey.”

'State of the art' services

McGinley came to the Milwaukee VA after working as an occupational therapist in community hospitals for 30 years, and she praised the VA’s services as “state of the art.”

“You can’t find low-vision services like this in community-based hospitals,” she said, noting how easy it is for Veterans grappling with vision problems to also get other services, such as occupational therapy and mental health.

“We have a whole team here, which is why I can feel so good advocating for our services. I’m proud of the services we offer,” McGinley said.

“Coming here was really a leap of faith, and it’s been wonderful,” she said. “I love it. I couldn’t love the Veterans more. It’s really rewarding.”