Once a year an opportunity comes along to showcase optometry on the national stage and this year practices are being urged to take an active role in demonstrating the very best that optics has to offer.
National Eye Health Week starts on September 24 and this year the organisers will be highlighting the importance of regular eye examinations. The emphasis will be on the implications for wider health and the role eye care, through eye examinations, can have on general health and picking up on other conditions.
For seven days media organisations will be assailed by NEHW with reasons why their readers, viewers and listeners should be having regular eye examinations but in today’s dumbed down world messages have to be impactful and short .
This year NEHW is turning to high street practices to look for the cases studies and stories that with strike a chord with the public – that’s where you come in. The most powerful tales come from real life. NEHW wants to hear from you about patients presenting with conditions not normally associated with the eye.
Perhaps you have detected diabetes, hypertension, raised cholesterol or the early signs of multiple sclerosis among your patients. NEHW is calling on community practices to share those experiences so it can use them to benefit the whole of the profession by raising awareness among the public.
Case studies are an incredibly powerful tool to educate others about the importance of eye exams in detecting disease. Why not provide NEHW with the examples it needs to build powerful messages to put out to the media. The results may not be immediate but even if one patient presents for an eye exam as a result it’s a positive step.
Send your experience to rachel@visionmatters.org.uk.