Our CPD and Publication Events

6 November 2024

These events have provided invaluable opportunities for networking, sharing information about our services, and receiving feedback on how we can continue to improve. Here’s a quick recap of some recent highlights.

Our Glaucoma Lead, Tom Mackley was pleased to attend the UK & Eire Glaucoma Society Conference (UKEGS), to share the great outcomes from Primary Eyecare Services’ Glaucoma Pathways.

During the event, Tom presented posters showing our data on the efficacy of Glaucoma Referral Filtering Pathways in Primary Care. The data presented by Tom concluded that  GERS has the potential to deliver a meaningful reduction in new patient presentations in secondary care glaucoma clinics, deflecting nearly half of all patients whilst facilitating timely referral with standardised baseline data where indicated.

In Gloucestershire, two of our Clinical Leads, Ankur Trivedi and Wasim Sarwar, attended the Gloucestershire LOC CPD Event.

Attending regional LOC events provides valuable insight into how working collaboratively with LOCs is essential to the success of our service delivery.

The Boots Opticians Midlands Regional Event offered an excellent platform to discuss our services and connect with optometry professionals. Additionally, our Professional Development Lead, Wasim Sarwar, conducted a Glaucoma Filtering Services Workshop during the event.

Another Boots Opticians Event was attended in Bristol, by two of our Clinical Leads, Amy Hughes and Rukaiya Anwar.

Speaking about the day, Amy commented: “It was great to be at the Boots Opticians Regional Event today, chatting to new and familiar faces about our services, including great feedback about the new BNSSG Enhanced Macula Referral Service.”

This year, in addition to participation in in-person events, the Primary Eyecare Services team have hosted several CPD events, with more scheduled as the year draws to a close and the current 3-year CPD cycle concludes. A breakdown of our upcoming CPD events including provisional dates are outlined below.

Kicking off November’s events, the team will participate in the Specsavers PAC Conference, taking place on Sunday, 3rd November, where practitioners attending the event can engage in a peer review on glaucoma filtering.

On Wednesday, 6th November, an online IP Peer Review session will take place at 7pm. This event is fully booked, however due to its popularity we intend to run more peer review sessions in 2025.

A few days later, on Saturday, 11th November, the popular CUES Conundrum session will return, offering two back-to-back lectures on the challenges and solutions associated with the Community Urgent Eyecare Service (CUES) model. These sessions are designed to equip practitioners with the skills needed to address complex cases and improve patient outcomes effectively. To register for this event, please click the link here: Webinar Registration – Zoom.

The team has also scheduled a re-run of the glaucoma filtering topic with an online webinar on Saturday, 18th November, at 7pm. To attend this event, please register via the following link: Webinar Registration – Zoom.

A new session, ‘Delivering Exceptional Care in CUES,’ will be taking place specifically tailored for front-of-house staff. This event, still awaiting final dates, will offer both lunchtime and evening sessions to accommodate varied schedules.

Closing out the year, a Pre-Op Cataract Webinar is set to take place in December. The exact date for this webinar is yet to be confirmed.

One of our goals moving forward is to increase engagement with non-participating practitioners in areas where our services are available, addressing any concerns they may have about enhanced services.

Looking ahead to 2025, we have numerous plans for deliver education to support enhanced service delivery.

If you have any suggestions for future events, we’d love to hear them, please reach out to wasim.sarwar@primaryeyecare.co.uk

We look forward to speaking with more of you in the future, so make sure to keep an eye out for us!