Search

Aug/Sep 2015 Quiz 1

History A 60-year-old woman was referred to ophthalmology with a suspected left eye choroidal naevus. Visual acuity was unaffected in both eyes and she was asymptomatic. Ocular history and medical history were unremarkable. Questions Figure 1: Fundus photograph. 1. What...

Aug/Sep 2014 Quiz 1

History A 50-year-old female with a history of smoking, weight loss and cough presents to the ophthalmology clinic with a distorted pupil. Examination reveals a mass on the surface and within the iris (see Figure 1). The ophthalmologists decide to...

Keeping watch

Although it’s autumn, it’s not too cold and the slight breeze blowing up from the sea does not make me regret leaving my jacket in clinic. It’s a strange site; hundreds of hospital staff standing on either side of the...

Phacogeddon

A trainee shortly to rotate to my firm was unhappy at the fact that she had only one phaco list in her timetable. She was a final year trainee with more than five hundred cataract extractions to her name so...

Trainee personality types

Over the past two years I have attended quite a number of medical educational seminars and ‘workshops’ and have been a bit shocked at how out of kilter with reality the world of education seems to be now. It seems...

Unconscious bias

Swansea University invited me to an Away Day. There was a whole day of lectures planned at a hotel conference suite just outside Swansea but due to clinic commitments I only caught the afternoon session; a ‘workshop’, on how to...

The pyramid

The first time I attended the Congress of the Royal College of Ophthalmologists was now more than 10 years ago, though I still remember the excitement of wandering down the aisles in the exhibition hall marvelling at the stands and...

The vitreoretinal priesthood

When I first started doing cataract lists, the consultant at the time, a Mr Brown from Carmarthen, used to say that phacoemulsification was more akin to flying a jet fighter for short dangerous bombing runs than a boring long haul...

No such thing as a free lunch

Rudyard Kipling was a very wise chap. He was in San Francisco towards the end of the 19th century and noticed that in some bars and saloons the house was giving away free lunches for every patron who first purchased...

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...

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...