Does anyone else hate virtual meetings? Or am I the only person who sometimes feels like they would rather set themselves on fire than be subjected to a mind-numbing hour of Zoom or Microsoft Teams, break-out rooms and ‘can everybody see my screen?’ with their colleagues? There are two reasons that I dread online meetings.
Firstly, thanks to the many now viral videos that are hilarious to all except the unfortunate individual who made the mistake, I seem to have developed an irrational fear that I will forget to turn my microphone off and embarrass myself somehow.
Secondly, I long for the old, pre-Covid days of in-person meetings. The good old days when I attended in-person Regional Optical Committee (ROC) meetings were much better for me. Even though I was always the outsider, and a few of the attendees were less than polite to me for daring to be in the room despite not having an optometry degree, there was always food laid on. Winner.
Thankfully, I do not go to the ROC meetings anymore but last week I was present for the latest meeting of our fairly newly formed optometry cluster group. Engagement with our cluster group is a mandatory part of our new Wales General Ophthalmic Services (WGOS) contract so even if I had felt strongly enough to set myself on fire to get out of it - I really could not.
It is early days for us and we are still all finding our feet as part of this group. Few of us seem to have any ideas yet and hardly any of us actually say anything. I am sure we all mean well but I for one do not know exactly what a successful and productive optometry collaborative group should look like. However, I do know we are not quite at correct level yet. In fact, sometimes I wonder why we are all there.
Well, strictly speaking I know why we’re there. As I said earlier, it is part of our new WGOS contract that we will all engage with our clusters. Each practice must send a representative along, and the practice is duly paid for our attendance. What I mean is, if few of us in the meeting feel we have anything to contribute, then what are we actually achieving by gathering at all?
Thankfully among a couple of awkward silences there were some pieces of important information that made me glad that I had attended. The part of the meeting that I found the most interesting was around some future plans for social prescribing.
Even though as a non-registrant, I personally do not prescribe, socially or otherwise, I am really excited by the idea of optometrists taking the time to help with meeting the practical, emotional, and social needs of patients by connecting them with local activities and services. This can help the patients’ health and wellbeing in a more holistic way.
We keep trying to get the message out that optometrists are part of the primary care workforce, optometrists ask patients about their general health and lifestyle during an eye exam, and we all know there are countless links between lifestyle factors and eye health. So, it makes good sense for clinicians to be able to tie that in and perhaps offer more than a change in prescription or a medical referral at the end of an appointment.
With one of my practices being in a rather deprived area and with most patients at the other practice being over 70 years old, we have countless patients that social prescribing could help. I am excited to see the difference that social prescribing will make to the general health of the population in Wales.
As far as the meetings themselves go, even though I find them trying at times, I love that local practices now must engage with each other and that optometry in Wales will be engaging with the other primary care disciplines in a more meaningful way.
I even think it was a great idea to tie that in with the terms of our WGOS contract, but I can’t help wondering if it would be better to somehow require practices to engage with their ROCs, in turn requiring the committees to ensure fair representation of the workforce at cluster meetings?
The optical committees are supposed to represent the future interests of the local workforce, and I have been to meetings in the past where agenda items were the likes of ‘ideas of how we can encourage more people to come and join us.’ So, requiring each practice to engage with their ROC would surely be mutually beneficial.
The drawback of this idea is that I would then have to re-engage with my local ROC, which I do not think I would like. But really every practice should be contributing to the workings of their local committee - offering opinions and ideas from a variety of standpoints, and with the added bonus that we can all ensure that those tasked with representing our interests remain representative of the workforce and are held accountable.
- Francesca Blackmore is owner and practice manager of Pearce & Blackmore Opticians in the Cardiff area.