by Lorcan Butler, Optical Engagement Manager, www.thebraintumourcharity.org
Belfast's RCOphth Annual Congress 2024 was host to the Eyecare Professionals Day on May 23.
After being absent for quite a few years we were delighted to bring this wonderful, educational day back onto the RCOphth Congress calendar. It was held on the fourth and final day of the conference and was open to any delegates. It was aimed primarily at the numerous HCPs that work in ophthalmology that aren’t an ophthalmologist, such as ophthalmic nurses, ophthalmic nurse practitioners, nurse consultants, optometrists, orthoptists, photographers / imagers and technicians.
We were lucky to have such a wonderful mix of speakers representing the numerous professions listed above including two local ophthalmologists from Belfast, Usha Chakravarthy and Professor Tunde Peto – two very well-known and established speakers on the ophthalmology conference scene. Chakravarthy spoke about the new treatment options coming our way for geographic atrophy, including patient selection criteria and proposed treatment regimens. Prof Peto gave a fascinating talk from her macular clinic experience, discussing her experience with perifoveal telangiectasia.
Representing orthoptics we had a wonderful dual presentation from Pamela Anketell and Kelly Harpur, discussing diplopia in the optometric / ophthalmic clinic setting with some fantastic tips. Co-Chair Ophthalmic Nurse Catherine Dardis presented a very engaging exploration of some interesting retinal cases with some great interactions from the delegate floor.
Rebecca Turner, Chair of UKISOP, gave a very practice-based lecture on risk assessment in cataract surgery and how implementing a new system was designed from idea to completion, highlighting the challenges that occurred, while being keen to emphasise that improvement in patient-centred care was both the aim and the final result.
Topcon Clinical Affairs Manager, Dani Lee, gave a fascinating presentation on OCT and its applications. There were some delegates there with varying degrees of knowledge about OCT and Dani was able to discuss the simple cases to the more complex cases with ease in a manner followed by everyone. The last session was a really practical, engaging, hands-on session from Heine on binocular direct ophthalmoscopy. This really got the attendees involved practically and generated a lot of fun as everyone was involved helped each other discover the illumination methods and the use of the condensing lenses both from the perspective of a practitioner and a patient.
We are really thankful to all of the speakers and delegates who helped us relaunch this fantastic day of multi-disciplinary education and passing of clinical pearls. We very much look forward to seeing you at next year's Eyecare Professionals day at RCOthph Congress in Liverpool 2025.
