It’s 11.20 am on Wednesday 25^th September and I’m listening to Lynne doing the rounds on local radio. What does this mean?

This morning the BBC website posted an article referencing new research about Myopia from the "British Journal of Ophthalmology". I linked this to our internal LFO Slack so our team would know this may be a topic of discussion from our patients. As we are Myopia Management specialists we expect press and public enquiries.

By 7.30 am our wonderful Clinical Lead Optometrist, Rebecca Donnelly had been contacted by BBC 5 Live to do a live interview on the Breakfast show. Rebecca of course nailed it. These interviews are all about preparation, and I know Rebecca would have rehearsed in her head possible questions and answers.

Stories and headlines from the national BBC website and radio get offered to local BBC stations and they often ask major interviewees to do the rounds. Rebecca was booked to see patients today, so Lynne stepped up. I say stepped up: Lynne’s now quite experienced following many spots on John Darvell’s BBC Bristol show. Like Rebecca she prepares diligently and has a great “radio” style.

Incidentally the article noted that Paraguay has one of the lowest levels of myopia at 1%. Thirty years ago Lynne set up a charity clinic in Paraguay to test eyes of the most impoverished. She later moved onto Peru, where I joined her for my elective research about refractive errors in the Quechuan peoples. One of my conclusions was that refractive errors were strongly influenced by environment, not just genetics (which was the accepted science at the time).

Myopia Management is easy, right? Wait until a child complains they cannot see the white board, test their eyes, find a myopic prescription and give a special lens.

Or…

You could trust somewhere that has designed and implemented a Standard Operating Procedure based on published science to use as a framework to inform clinical practice and specific advice for every individual child.

One is easy, one is hard for an optometrist to deliver. To paraphrase JFK, (at LFO), we choose to offer Myopia Management and do the other clinical work (EyeSense for Glaucoma, for SPLD, for Dry Eye etc), not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because we want to use our energies and skills to offer excellence in eyecare.

Gerard