Many readers may not have heard of orthoptists
Newcastle RVI orthoptists Lucy Ball and Jenny Earl(Image: ChronicleLive / Simon Greener)
High up in the Royal Victoria Infirmary is the Claremont Wing, which has now celebrated its 30th birthday. There, there are doctors, nurses, optometrists and a whole range of additional professions. Among those people are the orthoptists.
Orthoptics is a specialist branch of healthcare dedicated to assessing, diagnosing and treating conditions affecting our vision. This could be double vision in adults along with some of the typical issues that children face with their vision – including squints or lazy eyes.
Two of the RVI’s expert orthoptists, Lucy Ball and Jenny Earl, told ChronicleLive more about their role – and how it has changed over the years. Lucy, who is still in the early stages of her career, said: “We work with both children and adults who have vision and eye movement problems. Generally that’s with children who have lazy eyes or squints and adults who might have double vision.
“It’s quite a niche profession – with only three universities offering the course. I had always wanted to get into healthcare. It’s nice to be able to help people in a way that no-one else can – because our area is so specialist, no-one else can do what we do.”
Jenny explained what their work can involve. She said: “Each patient is different. Our role sees us use a problem-solving approach to support them – and we’re part of a really wide-ranging multi-disciplinary team. We will do lots of vision assessments, lots of scans! There are so many different expanded roles to take on. Now we can specialise in so many different areas.
One of the most typical kinds of patient who will attend and see an orthoptist like Jenny or Lucy is a child with a lazy eye. One such patient in the late 1990s was this reporter.
Back then, beige elastoplast-style patches were common – and often despised by an image-conscious child. Now, Lucy explains, treatment has come on significantly. “Now we have lots of options – there’s the option of eye drops – along with eye patches. Back then, it would have just been the boring patches, but now we have fun ones.”
The pair explained that the key aspect to their work with children was making sure that treatment was easy for the child to engage with. Lucy added: “It’s the same with kids’ glasses – there are much more available. It’s much easier to encourage kids to wear them. Like with patches, if you can make them fun so the child enjoys wearing them, that really helps!”
“The pair explained that the key aspect to their work with children was making sure that treatment was easy for the child to engage with.”
The ophthalmology department at the RVI has been in situ for 30 years now, following a move from a number of different sites across the city in 1996 which saw complex surgical procedures brought together with a whole range of other services.
Speaking last month, head optometrist Aedheen Regan said: “The service is really completely different to 30 years ago. For me, as much as there will be mornings where I might complain, this is such a rewarding job. And the fact that it is constantly changing keeps us on our toes.”
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