Bay of Plenty GPs, nurse practitioners and pharmacists were invited to an educational evening in late August to learn more about prevalent eye conditions and connect with other healthcare colleagues, to ultimately better patient management.
Bay Eye Care’s Alex Petty, who hosted the evening, said: “If we can up-skill general practitioners about common eye conditions it will give them more confidence managing straightforward conditions, and a better ability to know when to refer patients that really need an eye care professional to treat them.” In addition, he said, with optometrists’ increasing scope of practice it is also important to educate general doctors about what optometrists can handle, and ideally get the message across that an optometrist should be the first point of referral for an eye condition. “If the patient needs ophthalmology help the condition can be accurately triaged and an appropriate referral made, rather than clogging the ophthalmology and A+E lists unnecessarily.”
One of the attending GPs, Dr Jen Holloway, said it was a great evening - well organised and delivered at an appropriate level for all healthcare practitioners: “It was very informative and well run and I will be looking forward to it being repeated next year.”
The programme covered the impending myopia epidemic, managing acute eye conditions and chronic lid and ocular surface conditions, including dry eye and blepharitis. Guest presenter Dr Sam Kain, ophthalmologist from Tauranga Eye Specialists, gave a talk on diabetes in the eye and the retinal photo screening programme in the Bay of Plenty.
