Our Ophthalmology team (pictured) held its seventh PrEYEority super week from Monday 12 September – seeing 1,153 patients, smashing their own target of 800 patients.

This was made possible thanks to staff going above and beyond, holding twilight clinics during the evenings, as well as across the weekend to see as many patients as possible.

Ayman Khaier, Clinical Lead for Ophthalmology, said: “We started doing these high-volume weeks in November 2020 and all the team make such an effort to put them together.

“When I asked them to do another I got a great response with lots of people volunteering. I’m pleased we managed to see so many more patients than we planned. We focused on those who had faced the longest waits and got lots of positive feedback. These focused efforts are the best way to keep our waiting lists down.”

The team also managed to reduce non-attendance by texting and calling patients in advance of their appointment.

Thanks to these focused efforts to reduce waits for adult patients, Ayman and the team are now turning their attention to a backlog of children who need to be seen, launching the ‘Bright Eyes’ project this month.

Over the course of the next three months Ayman and his colleagues aim to see 1,000 children at additional clinics, some taking the place of adult clinics. This will slash the current waiting list of 1,400 children.

Ayman added: “We have a small team that treat children so we are optimising that and have lots of children coming in.

“The backlog of non-urgent cases built up during the pandemic as we were focused on high-risk patients during that time. These are children where there is a mild concern, or they might need glasses.”

Following on from the pandemic we’ve been holding innovative super weeks and projects like this to reduce waits across our services, including our ‘Bones’ weeks. Read more about how we’re reducing our waiting lists.