There is a lot going on in the orthoptic research world but lots of you probably don’t find out about it.

If things are to get into these PV pages researchers either need to tell me about them or put items in themselves – and it’s easy to forget, or the moment passes. But even PV is quite an inefficient way of spreading the word. The main Research Pages of the website has some news, as well as documents such as research strategies, how to do a poster, presentation or survey; but the best place to get your message out (or some messages in!) is via Twitter. We need to share our successes, expertise, opportunities and challenges much more – with the added bonus that it can all lead to CPD.

Interesting new papers, hot topics, research successes, research-related events, calls for grants, come and go very quickly, and the website or even PV can rarely keep up. With Twitter, by following some people or groups you can get a feel for what’s going on as it happens, and might be prompted to explore further. You will find the BIOS Research Twitter feed is on the right-hand side of the Research Members pages of the BIOS website but – be honest – how many of you visit the research pages regularly? If you have a Twitter account and follow us, it comes to your phone – a re-tweet takes seconds and can reach thousands of people.

Here are a couple of examples of how we can influence and understand optometrists better. By Tweeting a link to a video I did about prisms for high street optometrists https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=2&v=ZMaB2Zo4SyU over 1000 views in the first week means we might avoid some inappropriate referrals and prescriptions. And if you read a new open-access paper published in Ophthalmic & Physiological Optics https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/opo.12612  you can find out UK optometrists’ refraction attitudes. All thanks to a couple of clicks on Twitter.

If you don’t do Twitter, please consider doing so, even if it is only for work-related things. That’s what I do. Follow or mention @OrthoptResearch @ECOrthoptic_Res @BIOJOrthoptics @followBIOS @AnnaHorwood for the most directly “orthoptist-related research topics” but then branch out. You quickly build up a much longer list of people to follow in the worlds of stroke, public health, low vision, ophthalmology, optometry, AHPs, etc etc. – whatever interests you. You can see who we follow for ideas. Re-tweet so that other people find out too, and tell us about successes.

So don’t be modest – get Tweeting!

Anna Horwood

BIOS Research & Innovation Director