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Les Misérables

I recently had the signal pleasure of undergoing Part 2 of the FRCOphth exit exam and could not help but wonder at how examiners could on the whole be easily categorised into certain subtypes which readers may find fascinating. This...

How to win presentation medals

Having been to many tens of thousands of ophthalmology registrar presentation competitions and seen the types of presentations that consistently impress the judges, as well as the ones that fail to make the grade, I feel it is my humble...

Life in the eye department

The crowd is gathering at the watering hole in the Serengeti that is Friday teaching at the Major Teaching Hospital. Would there be enough different species of consultant present or would there be insufficient numbers? If a critical mass of...

The Complainers

There she was. Sitting in the waiting room with her arms crossed, tut-tutting to herself and shaking her head mournfully every few minutes. We gazed at her from a safe distance while one of the nurses confirmed what we already...

The only thing to fear is fear itself

There is a song by the Amateur Transplants called ‘Finals Fantasy’ which describes in humorous detail how stressful clinical exams can be. Having not done any viva or objectively structured clinical examination (OSCE) style exams for many years indeed I...

Expenses

“How do I apply for expenses?” I asked one of the secretaries. The Royal Gwent Hospital was so far from home that I had been forced to rent one of their spartan on-site rooms in order to avoid a crippling...

Choosing a subspecialty

It is quite worrying how many registrars reach the final years of training without choosing a subspecialty. Sometimes this is because they love everything and cannot countenance giving any of it up, but more commonly this is due to various...

White dot syndromes

It is fair to say that trainees and consultants who are not medical retina specialists are a bit scared of the so called retinal ‘white dot syndromes’. It is easy to understand why this is the case, as almost every...

The 2020 Milgram Experiment

Will ophthalmology recover from COVID-19? Learning Curve columnist Gwyn Samuel Williams shares his thoughts on the developing impact of the pandemic “It’s busy today,” the nurse in green chuckles. “There are six patients I think.” Six. This clinic is designed...

Covid-19

I am writing this on 21 March 2020, and I am pretty confident that by the time you read this that whatever I say will already be hopelessly out of date. Plus, it’s only really what I think, and I...

The final step

Not long after securing my fellowship in London I was successful at interview for a consultant post at Singleton Hospital, Swansea. The interview took place before I had actually started in London and besides the basic things that are asked...

How to get out of chairing Zoom Meetings

One of the biggest changes brought on by far over the past two years is the emergence of Zoom, Teams, or a similar virtual platform for conducting the meetings we all know and love. There are many advantages, and also...