I am pleased to announce that Sajida Hanif will be joining me as joint lead of the Orthoptic Visual Processing Difficulties Clinical Advisory Group Lead.
Hello everyone please let me introduce myself and give you some background on my interest in VPD. I work at Buckinghamshire NHS Trust and I’m the Deputy Head Orthoptist and the Lead for Visual Processing Difficulties Clinic service for our county. This covers Amersham, Buckingham, High Wycombe and Stoke Mandeville Hospital. We also receive out of area referrals for Hemel Hempstead, Milton Keynes and Oxford.
My interest in VPD began when I attended my very first 2 week clinical placement as an undergraduate Orthoptist at Dunfermline Hospital and observed an afternoon session of this specialist clinic. Since then I have become very passionate about these clinics and the significant impact that we have as clinicians on a patient’s exposure to the national curriculum. The satisfaction when we diagnose a VPD issue and work with the patient to overcome this and how in turn this boosts their confidence, self-esteem and their academic achievement. I was very fortunate that I received additional training from Jackie Bates to assess these patients. I further built on my skills by completing the BIOS SLD competency course conducted by Nadia Northway which I completed in 2009. The clinics have built over time and I’ve managed this service at Buckinghamshire Trust for 15 years. I would love to share this journey with anyone who is interested in VPD, would like to set up the service, tips on how to sustain the service and how to engage key stakeholders. Therefore I have joined as Joint Lead and hoping to learn the ropes from Kath, who over the years is an amazing Lead to the VPD CAG group.
I am sure that you will have limited capacity to run the VPD clinics at present. We are just starting to see our VPD patients again now in my trust in Warrington. We had a telephone consultation service running during lock down that worked so well that we are continuing it as a way to take a full history prior to any face to face consultations. This is also the case at Buckinghamshire NHS Trust.
Let Sajida and I know if you would like any advice about any VPD matters. Our email address is VPD@orthoptics.org.uk
I will also thinking about planning a teaching session to run on Microsoft teams for any Orthoptists who would like refreshers on VPD work. Please let me know if this is something that you would be interested in as there will be no CAG Meeting this year for our specialty.
We continue to advise you of interesting articles with our bulletin and we are always here if you would like to shadow any of us working in this field.
Kathryn Whitfield and Sajida Hanif
Co-Leads of the Orthoptic Visual Processing Difficulties CAG
