My optical dispensing digest

I love these events! The ABDO Area 5 CET days, twice a year, once in Meriden in the Autumn and the other in Derby usually in March. I’ve been going twice a year for as long as I can remember, and I always come away feeling motivated and stimulated.

Today was a bit different, ABDO is changing, a new National Clinical Committee (NCC) which has been put in place to lead the profession, to build and promote the involvement of Dispensing Opticians in local pathways such as Minor eye conditions, low vision, triage in community practice and paedriatric dispensing. But more importantly, they will endeavor to publicize our role so that the public better understand what we do.

I’m afraid to say I still get asked “What do you do?” “What’s a Dispensing Optician?”

The NCC is being supported by ABDO’s regional leads and sub-regional leads, whose role is based working at a more local level. I felt honoured during the day to be in company with so many of these strategic Dispensing Opticians who are committed to raising the profile of our profession and make a difference at a local level with their expertise.  http://www.abdo.org.uk/news/abdos-force-for-the-future/

I sat next to Saima Begum, who will start her role as a sub-regional lead in January 2017, together with Lesley Parkinson, who helps to check us all in on the day. Richard Rawlinson, the regional lead for the Midlands was there, and he did a fab job in introducing like-minded DO’s to each other. From the NCC, we were privileged to have a talk by Nick Black, who spoke about LVA’s in his CET presentation, as well as overseeing a LVA workshop.

http://www.abdo.org.uk/news/new-abdo-regional-structure/

It was also a pleasure to see ABDO President, Fiona Anderson (we both did our Business Administration degrees together at Brunel University back in 2000-2003) and Vice President and NCC chair, Clive Marchant who hold the future of ABDO in the palms of their hands. To be in a room with professional’s who are so enthusiastic and passionate about our future filled me with a NEW excitement, even after being a DO for 24 years!

Another, memorable part of the day was in the LVA workshop, as we sat around the table and chatted about where we qualified and how we trained. On my table a mix of DO’s who were newly qualified and some were qualified 32 years ago, even longer than me! The majority of us went to City and Islington College. One gentleman said he was “grinning from ear to ear” after meeting a lady he did the course with 25 years ago! He couldn’t wait to catch up over lunch! Even more bizarre was the youngest member on our table who recognised the names of some of the tutors at City and Islington College, that we were speaking about – Pipe and Rapley, Mo Jalie and Jo Underwood either from her text books or Dispensing Optics but that myself and many around our table were very fortunate to have been taught by these highly successful lecturers.

Overall, a great day even with a lunch of new potatoes and potato wedges! However, our fantastic Area 5 team Mike Cody, Ian Hardwick and Clive Marchant were soon on the case as they realised the sandwiches and wraps had all gone! Thanks guys for your fab organisation for our events.

In future blogs, I’ll try and digest the learning from this event and pass on some tips and skills that I gained from this event, until then KEEP DISPENSING.………