Thoughts on the conference.

Better late than never, this was my first BARS conference and I found it very enlightening.

The one thing that stood out most dramatically for me was the complete absence of conformity on all levels of diabetic screening across the country!

I found the debate on “Mandatory dilation and two field photography are not necessary for an effective diabetic retinopathy screening programme” bewildering and struggled to understand the point of it all. I know Dr. Olson was out of his environment and had an uphill struggle to put his proposal across but personally I thought his delivery lacked the conviction one might have expected. Certainly Dr. Scanlons’ opposition to the proposal was far more polished and delivered with clarity and passion. What do you think?

I know there will always be resistance to change and “the way we do it” will always appear to be the best, failing to appreciate the merits of new fangled ideas until one is forced to confront them head on, but on this occasion I am sceptical in the extreme.

Certainly trying to implement such a change when there is little or no conformity across the service in practically every other field would be difficult to say the least.

It is a different matter with the subject of the Topcon lecture on “Computer analysis of digital retinal images”. This is coming sooner or later in one form or another whether you like it or not! Or am I wrong?

At the risk of labouring the point of lack of conformity across the service, I feel I must mention the workshop on “Diabetic Retinopathy Screening, How Do You Do It?”

I thought that nice Mrs. Dewhirsts' little boy delivered a very engaging workshop on this subject and it was here that the differences between all the regions was most clearly demonstrated. Mobile, static, solo, teams, working day, working week, primary grading or no grading at all, work load etc. etc. and any combination of these only underlined the obstacles any attempts to arrive at parity between us all will face!

Each revelation from the floor induced sharp intakes of breath culminating in one so large when the spread on salary banding relative to apparent level of responsibility was revealed, I thought we were all going to suffocate from lack of oxygen……………. In the light of this, where do you think you should be in the salary banding?