Well done to all the winners of the Optician Awards held last weekend. Excellent to see a fair representation of both genders and all ethnicities. Let’s hope this is reflected in everyone’s pay packets.
I notice the GOC has published the results of its recent consultation for an Education Strategic Review. The main findings, albeit based on just 33 respondents, showed 97% agreement for new standards of education for optometrists and dispensing opticians, 84% support for education linked to professional standards, and 82% backing a move to clinical training and experience being embedded within education from the start. This could be further incentive for a much-needed review of the undergraduate programme with increased patient access out in the field.
On a different matter, next week the Harvey family are re-entering the pub quiz world. This is partly spurred on by having discovered over the Optrafair weekend two excellent facts I had not previously known.
Firstly, I discovered that Diabetes UK, one of the UK’s most significant charities and a key player in addressing the current epidemic of the disease, was co-founded by sci-fi author and visionary HG Wells. Wells was a sufferer at a time way before the role of insulin in the disease had been fully understood.
Secondly, after a discussion about a paper on diabetes insipidus by the prolific optometrist Kirit Patel, which we will publish next week, I learned the origin of the term ‘diabetes’. I knew ‘mellitus’ was derived from the Latin for sweet or honeyed and relates to the taste of the urine of a sufferer.
I didn’t know that the word diabetes itself is from the ancient Greek for a drawing compass, with legs wide apart. From this, the term ‘diabainein’ evolved to describe standing with legs apart, as might be the pose of a polyuric person.
