If a week is a long time in politics a year in optics must qualify as an eternity. The past 12 months has been a whirlwind in which time I have started a new role as full professor at Aston University, been named in the top 100 most influential people in world ophthalmology, helped build a charity hospital in Cambodia and now I find myself installed as the new president of the BCLA.
It is a huge honour and I look forward to pushing ahead with the terrific work started by Keith Tempany on myopia control and increasing awareness of the treatments available for myopia.
As president I am fully aware that I cannot do things in isolation, we need to ensure the sum is greater than our parts and by working closely with other sectors we can begin to make a long-lasting difference to eye health. The BCLA is not just a contact lens organisation, it is an anterior eye organisation and that is something I am keen to focus on during my period at the helm.
I want to continue to grow the BCLA and improve accessibility to all of our busy members. I want to see our dry eye certificate and dry eye fellowship thrive and actually use the changes in the limitations of GP prescribing directives to drive growth and excellence in dry eye care in practice.
I will look to grow membership within the multiples and ensure we address their needs and I will encourage multidisciplinary working and encourage the best utilisation of CLO and OO skills for the benefit of the patients.
Improving ophthalmologists’ understanding of contacts lenses and increasing their involvement in the BCLA will also form a central plank of my agenda.
All in all it looks like being another busy 12 months. Let’s get started.
