Apart from advancing understanding of cardiovascular disease, improving care for osteoporosis, supporting vaccine development, learning how viruses (such as Varicella-zoster) are activated, aiding the design of water purification and filtration technology, advancing understanding of motor function and assisting with the design of modern prosthetics and robotics, finding ways of treating asthma, and adding to our understanding of ageing; what has space travel ever done for us?
I mulled this over while doing up my Velcro shoes after enjoying a Teflon-fried vegan egg substitute. I hope you enjoyed the space-related CPD.
On a different note, it is that time of year where a flurry of practice-based assessments come to a close. A time where I always find it useful to consider the latest questionable trends among our trainee optometrists, some of which can become embedded into general practice behaviour later on if left unchecked.
As always, some classics of old are again on display, such as turning all the lights off for the duochrome test, even though this is likely to shift the retinal focus from a photopic to a scotopic (more minus) end point. And doing binocular balancing on older patients who have no accommodation.
Most worrying this year, however, has been the number of trainees who do not use retinoscopy routinely, some even asking their assessor whether they need to do it at all. And some have actually explained that they have been on a course where they were told to ignore small cylinders found on ret. This is a new, and somewhat odd, trend.
Finally, if you have half an hour to spare, and are not upset by profanity, I heartily recommend Call Jonathan Pie, a comedy phone-in to be found on BBC Sounds. Part nine focuses on the NHS and includes a five-minute rant on what has gone wrong since the early 1970s. Essential listening.