First alumni meeting 17 March 2005 held as part of the Moorfields bicentenary meeting
Authors: Silver Janet 
Published: February 2006

Important anniversaries provoke reminiscence and re‐evaluation. My own talk at this meeting included a tribute to the early pioneers in the hospital service: my father Lionel was one of the first sessional ophthalmic opticians working alongside an ophthalmologist in the 1940s at Dulwich Hospital, which became part of Kings. When that team moved down to Dartford I took over at Kings. After a break to travel and have a couple of kids I noticed an advertisement for sessional work at Moorfields. The Moorfields experience has changed many lives; certainly mine! In 1964, when I started, ophthalmic opticians were accepted reluctantly and then only because medical refractionists were scarce. We did not see children, and were employed as fitters in the then separate contact lens department. The prevalent view in private practice was that only people who lacked the skills and talents to manage a business were likely to seek employment in a hospital. Perhaps certain differences could be discerned: hospitals have never provided the financial rewards available in the high street, so a different priority system could have been misunderstood. Whatever the reasons, 40 years ago Norman Hudson was ‘Senior Ophthalmic Optician’ with a couple of part‐timers, dispensing opticians and clerks, forming the seeds from which the present structure of a department of approaching 100 people has grown. Our expertise as the hospital's experts in refraction, contact lenses and low vision is totally accepted. Now, optometrists work as part of the clinical team in general, special and outreach clinics: we have a core department, teach ophthalmologists, optometrists and other disciplines, work closely with the Institute of Ophthalmology and produce good quality research. It has been calculated that over 150 pre‐registered optometrists have been through Moorfields. Others have joined us after a pre‐registration year in another hospital or to widen their experience. Some have moved into private optometric practice, some to other hospitals, some to academic posts, a few have qualified in medicine some with great distinction, and some have stayed at Moorfields. Our first ever pre‐reg is still with us. There is certainly some evidence that Moorfields is habit‐forming. Each individual brought something to the department, and with pride I can claim that the evolutionary consultative approach that we adopted, combined with an obvious ability to discern talent in the selection of staff, led to the current situation where to be able to put ‘trained or worked at Moorfields’ on a CV holds the same cachet, and produces some of the same resentments, in optometry as it does in ophthalmology. The depth and diversity of the department alumni is evident from the abstracts of the papers delivered at the meeting. These range from hard laboratory‐based science through clinical methodology, to review. The quality of the presentations was uniformly high. It was good to hear a number of people who are the mainstay of many courses and conferences; but a particular pleasure to hear from some who have made very few public contributions before. From the front it was apparent that as many again could have reported on current or past projects – even with many unavoidable but noticeable absences. The organisers are to be congratulated on this balanced selection and the impeccable organisation. Quite possibly the differences between commercial and hospital optometry will increase: a hospital diploma on the lines of the DCLP might be considered. Over the last 40 years much has changed at Moorfields; many more changes can be expected in future.