Three thousand join Specsavers miniPAC

Specsavers’ Mini Professional Advancement Conferences (miniPAC) have drawn approximately three thousand eye care professionals for a combination of virtual and in-person education and training.

The 2022 miniPAC series delivered a month of virtual continuing professional development (CPD) activity in April, followed by in-person CPD events in Manchester, Glasgow, Belfast, Dublin, Bristol and London. These marked the first in-person Specsavers CPD events in two years.

Workshops covered cataract cases, children’s vision, optical coherence tomography and coaching for improving clinical outcomes, and future technology advances in contact lenses.

Delivering the event in a hybrid format meant more clinicians were able to join. More than 600 practitioners from outside of Specsavers took part in the online events, marking a record number for the multiple.

Grant Duncan, Specsavers director of professional advancement, acknowledged that the pandemic had led the team to “re-imagine” the way interactive peer discussions were delivered, adding: “But out of challenge came opportunity and benefits to colleagues who could learn and earn their requisite CPD points from the convenience of their clinic or living room.”

“Colleagues have told us how much they’ve loved that flexibility, but also – once we were able to – how much they’ve missed catching up with other clinical colleagues in person rather than on-screen,” Duncan continued. “So, for our first conference series of 2022, we’ve offered both – allowing clinicians the option to mix-and-match virtual and in-person depending on their interests and availability.”

Specsavers’ main Professional Advancement Conference for optics and audiology will return as an in-person event at the ICC in Birmingham on 16 October.