On 10 May, we led the fourth National Student Ophthalmology Conference (NSOC) for the first time in person, in London, with remote accessibility via Zoom, hosting over 130 attendees from the UK and across the globe. The day was packed with insightful keynote talks delivered by:
- Claudia Quijano on her journey from medical school to an ophthalmic surgeon, and the lessons she learnt along the way.
- Chanelle Smith on how burnout can impact your life as an ophthalmology trainee, and the top tips to avoid this!
- Radhika Rampat on how we can improve sustainability in ophthalmology.
NSOC leads, Umme Kalsoom Alam and Adnan Abdul Aziz.
Alongside keynote talks, there were four workshops that participants rotated through. These workshops were carefully picked and designed to help participants gain further insight into ophthalmology and tackle some of the daunting sides of getting into specialty training.
- Rishi Gandhewar led two workshops on (1) how to write a systematic review and (2) how they can build their ophthalmology portfolio and created an open space for questions.
- Jack Wellington and Ashad Noor ran online parallel workshops on writing systematic reviews and tackling the ophthalmology portfolio, respectively.
- Haidar Manzar offered a hands-on workshop allowing participants to get an insight into micro suturing! This skill is not commonly taught at medical school, and so it was unique experience for our attendees to gain.
- Attendees had a chance to debate and ‘Critically compare two evolving approaches to glaucoma surgery: traditional trabeculectomy vs minimally invasive glaucoma surgery (MIGS)’.
- Tony Ward provided an interactive quiz on high-yield topics from the Duke Elder and MLA. This gave participants a chance to increase their understanding of ophthalmology, as it is not a commonly well-taught subject in medical school.
Attendees taking part in the Micro suturing workshop.
Our attendees also had the opportunity to get involved in oral and poster presentations alongside an art competition – we ended the conference listening to four amazing presentations! Our positive feedback from attendees made all the effort and planning worthwhile, and it’s exciting to hear that most participants will return next year!
We are proud to have raised money for our partner charities, EyeHealthAfrica and Seeability! We would like to thank all the attendees for attending the conference both online and in person, and a huge thank you to our amazing team who worked hard all year to make the first in-person NSOC come to life!
Attendees listening to a keynote talk.
