On Saturday March 27th several Rotarians and friends of Rotary came out and let the Rotary Eye Clinic team put to use the skills that we had been working on for several months. It was a good chance to see how our equipment set up worked as well as the flow and timing of patients.
In the photo on the right Dr. Carl goes over the plan for the day with the team.

This is our intake process where we get information from the patient on their medical history and other vitals.

Next step is the basic chart reading exercise to test visual acuity. In the test we have set up for use in Guatemala we use various rotations of the letter E and ask the patient to indicate to us, using a card the position of the E that is being pointed to on the chart. We anticipate that some of our patients we will see in our clinic will not be able to read hence the use of the rotating E and the card.

Nest step is to put drops in the patient's eyes to dilate their pupils. This is necessary so that we can properly assess their condition and determine their prescription if needed.

Part of the service that we provide is a basic health check where blood pressure and blood sugar tests are done and recorded.

Using an auto-refractor we measure the prescription in the eyes. This amazing machine uses a cone of infrared light as part of the measuring process.










Then the patients get to see Dr. Carl who examines them and then pulls all of the information together to determine what the patient needs and he prescribes the corrective lenses if required.

After a check-up with Dr. Carl patient go to the dispensing station where we look up their prescription in our data base. We retrieve 3 pairs of glasses that are nearest their requirement and then fit the most suitable one to the patient. For our "test" clinic we didn't dispense any glasses but the "mock" process helped us refine our processes.





As per most of our training sessions we ended up with some hospitality - today was homemade chili, veggies, salad, bread and focaccia. We finished off with some magnificent chocolate peanut butter cookies. Check out our recipe section if you are interested.

Thank you to the volunteers for helping us prepare for our clinics in Guatemala.

Preparations are under way

The Rotary Club of Perth will be conducting eye clinics for the indigenous people of Guatemala in April 2010.

Preparations have been underway for many months. Key activities have been logistics, linguistics and lasagne - the 3 L's.

More about the 3 Ls:

Logistics included everything from getting there, getting the eyeglasses, training the volunteers, raising the funds for equipment and designing the workshops.

Linguistics included getting the team up to speed with some basic Spanish and arranging for translators to translate from Spanish to Mam or Quiché which is the dialect of the native Mayans who will be attending the clinics.

Lasagne is about one of the favourite foods that the Team had at the many dinners during our various training session. “Feed them well, perhaps a glass of wine and they gladly participate and let us dilate their eyes” could have been our modus operandi. In those sessions the Team took turns getting and giving eye drops, taking and giving blood for diabetes testing and monitoring blood pressure levels.