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I am absolutely delighted to be accepted as the Southern Region Trustee for BIOS. I have been a member of BIOS for a number of years now and during this time I have served as a committee member and regular contributor to the BIOS Orthoptic Society Neuro Orthoptic Clinical Activity Group, the BIOS private patients’ group.

I trained at Moorfields Eye Hospital and was appointed to my first job at St Thomas’ in 1992.This is where I have been ever since! I became the Head Orthoptist in 1994 and Eye Team Lead in 2010.St Thomas’ is known as a tertiary referral centre and its Medical eye unit brings us complex neurological cases and patients with systemic diseases and related eye problems.

I have enjoyed teaching orthoptics, promoting the multi-disciplinary team, the extended role for orthoptists and optometrists and developing the role of the Ophthalmic Technician. I encourage orthoptists in the extended role and St Thomas’ has orthoptic staff working in Medical retina clinics, injecting for macular degeneration; glaucoma clinics, neuro-ophthalmology, Idiopathic intercranial hypertension, Neurofibromatosis, juvenile arthritis anduveitis clinics. I am the South East lead for the Ophthalmic Practitioner Training (OPT) for the Royal College of Ophthalmologists.

I have been a visiting lecturer for 10 years within the School of Optometry and Vision Science at City, University of London and was previously an external examiner for the Orthoptics BSc and MSc courses at Liverpool University.

I ama regular contributor to national, regional and local teaching programmes. I love teaching clinical orthoptics not just for orthoptic students but for all related professions.

I helped develop the St Thomas’ Squint course which has evolved into “Squint in a day” for ophthalmologists. I have taught abroad in Myanmar, Pakistan, India and Tanzania (as part of the 2020 Links program).

I now help ESONT(European Society of Ophthalmic Nurses and Technicians) run a 6-monthly program on the skills around cataracts, promoting the ophthalmic MDT and the orthoptic and optometry roles requiring expertise in testing vision, visual fields and specialist understanding of patients with squint and diplopia with cataract. I also lead the AHP section of the Society Ophthalmic European, which has a meeting every two years.

I believe that multi-disciplinary working is really important and I have been very proud to promote this over the last 12 months, as Master of the Worshipful Company of Spectacle Makers. WCSM is the oldest optical organisation in the world and is the only London livery company entirely dedicated to eye health. It has 900members across 17 countries and brings together people from every aspect of vision care, sight loss and many other professions, who all believe that nobody should be left behind because of poor sight.

The opportunity to serve as the first ever Orthoptist Master has enabled me to promote Orthoptics in many different arenas, from speaking to judges at the Old Bailey to meeting eye health professionals of the future, and attending high-powered scientific and medical meetings discussing how we harness research with financial investment to push forward the wider eye health agenda.

Liz Tomlin
Trustee for South of England
southtrustee@orthoptics.org.uk