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Dans le Noir

There is a restaurant in London where dinner is served in the dark. Not dim light or occasional infrequent light, but absolute pitch black darkness. Apparently the aim is twofold; to better appreciate the quality of the food as the...

Rite of passage

The Lakota Sioux people of Dakota have one of the best preserved Native American cultures in the United States and when people think of the ‘American Indian’ it is to the culture of the Lakota Sioux that people mostly turn....

Handover of power

Election time comes every five years in the United Kingdom. It is usually a time of excitement and trepidation as people wonder what will change, for whom and over how long, depending on which party might win power. Usually it...

The focus group

I love conferences. Euretina I love above all others, and when it came to London in 2014 I was determined to attend. A few weeks before the conference was scheduled to begin a well-known pharmaceutical company sent me an email...

Turn up anytime

When I was starting off in ophthalmology my then boss had a standard spiel after completing a cataract case. It did not vary and I do not recall an instance of it not taking place. “The operation went well and...

Training the trainers

Learning phakoemulsification is a psychologically demanding process. Every ophthalmologist passing through the UK training system will almost certainly have many stories to tell of difficulties faced along the way; hideous disasters where lessons were learnt, as well as glorious triumphs...

Les Misérables

I recently had the signal pleasure of undergoing Part 2 of the FRCOphth exit exam and could not help but wonder at how examiners could on the whole be easily categorised into certain subtypes which readers may find fascinating. This...

Life in the eye department

The crowd is gathering at the watering hole in the Serengeti that is Friday teaching at the Major Teaching Hospital. Would there be enough different species of consultant present or would there be insufficient numbers? If a critical mass of...

The Complainers

There she was. Sitting in the waiting room with her arms crossed, tut-tutting to herself and shaking her head mournfully every few minutes. We gazed at her from a safe distance while one of the nurses confirmed what we already...

The only thing to fear is fear itself

There is a song by the Amateur Transplants called ‘Finals Fantasy’ which describes in humorous detail how stressful clinical exams can be. Having not done any viva or objectively structured clinical examination (OSCE) style exams for many years indeed I...