If you have an interest in prescribing contact lenses – or you’re considering dabbling in them – this is your issue.
Hot on the heels of the British Contact Lens Association’s (BCLA’s) annual conference, BCLA President Neil Retallic presents us with an entertaining article that should help you help your patients overcome any apprehensions they may have about wearing contact lenses.
In case that’s not enough to fill you with confidence about proactively discussing this form of vision correction with your patients, we spoke to local contact lens enthusiasts, Dr Margaret Lam, Narelle Hine, and Hilton Sandler about what excites them so much about this area of the profession.
Their sense of pride and joy had me considering going back to uni to study optometry!
Speaking of the professional satisfaction he gets from fitting patients with contacts, Hilton said, “you hear it in their tone of voice, you see it in the expression on their face, it makes them so happy to be able to function properly without wearing glasses”.
Margaret believes that gaining skills in prescribing contact lenses gives optometrists more confidence to “explore other more complex areas of optometry – and that’s what makes our career exciting”.
And Narelle said, “Multifocal contact lens fitting is where art meets science… It’s creative… When you are successful, you can change someone’s life!”
Further demonstrating the potential for contact lenses to make a real difference to people’s lives, British optometrists Drs Karen Carrasquillo and Kellen Riccobono have contributed a CPD article from the BCLA CLEAR report about their medical applications.
But before you dive into the fascinating world of contact lenses, take time to check out our lead story on a topic that can affect everyone in the eye care profession: physical pain. Inspired by a conversation with Ilsa Hampton, CEO of Optometry Victoria/South Australia, I spoke to optometrists, ophthalmologists, sales reps, and physiotherapists about the long-term injuries that can cut a career short. It is possible to avoid these injuries and by reading this article you’ll gain a few insights into how.
Enjoy!
