What not to do
It's frightening how many people put the health of their eyes at risk simply because they don't understand how dangerous poor contact lens hygiene can be. The films on this page are obviously caricatures, but how many contact lens wearers can honestly say they've never done some of these daft things?
Meet Helen, Briony, Shona and Susan, who are all tongue-in-cheek caricatures created for use as teaching aides to highlight the different attitudes to poor contact lens care that opticians often have to change.
A group of actors volunteered to take part and act out the caricatures to highlight to opticians the need to reinforce good contact lens care messages to would-be, new and established contact lens wearers.
The videos were designed for use in small groups of practitioners to develop communication strategies for re-educating contact lens wearers so that they understand that:
- They are susceptible to eye infections if they don’t comply with good contact lens practice
- The consequence is severe enough to change behaviour
- The barriers to good lens hygiene can be overcome
- There are benefits of good lens hygiene
Each video has been packaged with specific health messages related to the behaviours demonstrated so they can be seen in the public arena and used for our current contact lens campaign.
These videos are part of suite of materials that has been prepared for the campaign for practitioners by a research fellow and a team based at the NIHR biomedical research centre at Moorfields and the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology, and our in-house optometry department, with additional materials supplied by the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention in America.