How would you celebrate the end of the Coronavirus Pandemic?
Ms Sonia Nolan, Head of Communications and Giving at Royal Flying Doctor Service Western Australia, smiles and says:
“I think we would all probably want to give each other a really big hug”.
Ms Sonia Nolan, Head of Communications and Giving at Royal Flying Doctor Service Western Australia
She says that the Royal Flying Doctor Service (RFDS) in WA is a service of professionals working together in sometimes stressful and unique circumstances.
Every day, they save lives and provide emergency and community healthcare across the vast and remote regions of WA.
We cover more than 2.5 million square kilometres – the world’s largest health jurisdiction.
Ms Sonia Nolan, RFDS
They’re the mobile intensive care units of the sky with a fleet of 18 aircraft and five aeromedical bases in WA (Broome, Port Hedland, Meekatharra, Kalgoorlie and Jandakot).
RFDS “Intensive Care Unit in the Sky”
However, coronavirus has brought unprecedented challenges. How can you contain a global virus that could threaten wide parts of WA?
Over nine weeks have elapsed since RFDS WA first transferred its first patient with COVID-19 and many more suspected and/or confirmed patients have been cared for since then.
The service has invested in being response ready to ensure protocols, equipment, aircraft and logistics are in place to ensure the safety of all patients and the doctors, nurses and pilots on board.
While the clinicians and pilots are on the frontline, the behind the scenes teams supporting the emergency response are also working tirelessly – including the communications team which Sonia leads.
“This will be a marathon rather than a sprint,” Sonia said.
The keys to success to date have been clear for her already. They include strong leadership from her CEO, cohesive teamwork and an “amazingly supportive” family.
Like for many others across the state, the hours have been long for Sonia, both at the office and at home. She has seen her team at RFDS do what might be “two months’ worth of work in a week”.
“Everyone is just rising to the professionalism that they need to show.”
Ms Sonia Nolan, RFDS
Yet, each team member respects one another’s time. This includes checking in with one another for self-care.
As a team, they have quickly adapted to the challenges of working from home. This includes streamlining their process of setting priorities, working diligently and sharing results.
What are the most important messages for WA families? Sonia encourages people to follow reputable sources of information and all the public health messages.
“It really does make a difference if we have good hand hygiene and cough etiquette, use social distancing and self-isolation. I would stress though that we must keep in touch with one another and keep the community and friendship spirit alive.”
What will RFDS teamwork look like at the end of Coronavirus Pandemic?
“I think the world has changed significantly and the experience of COVID-19 will be with us for a while to come,” Sonia said.
“Without a doubt, technology has been an important tool. It has enabled my team to explore in-office and remote work options and I think going forward there may be a hybrid of the best of the old and the best of the new”.
The RFDS frontline teams are working with upgraded Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and stricter protocols and they are responding to the healthcare needs across WA as they always have done.
When we look to the future, we’re confident that the coronavirus pandemic will be managed and little by little we will be able to enjoy some of the simple pleasures we once took for granted.
Let’s celebrate our Perth Health Heroes!
Imagine the smiles, warm handshakes and hugs when the pandemic is over. Can you think of a better team to look after you?
Sonia is part of the Ezekiel Eyes Community in Perth. She wears contact lenses prescribed by Damon Ezekiel.
Sonia says that Damon is “genuinely interested in you as a person and he’s genuinely interested in finding the right solution for you”.
Optometrist Kok Kai Kang (Kai) served patients in Perth from 2012-2019
Damon Ezekiel, Principal Optometrist and Owner at Ezekiel Eyes:
“It is with regret that I announce that Kai, my colleague optometrist, has left Ezekiel Eyes to move back to Singapore.
Kai will return to his family and continue his optometry career in a Singapore Hospital eye clinic.
Kai was with us for seven years and was a much valued member of our team.
I would like to thank him for his great work and in particular for being the instigator of our Intense Pulse Light (IPL) for our many Dry Eye patients.
I have no doubts that Kai will succeed in whatever endeavours he undertakes, and I wish him all the very best on his new start in Singapore.
Meanwhile, I am on the look-out for another colleague to join me and help to continue the amazing things we do at Ezekiel Eyes to improve the quality of life of our patients. Stay tuned for news on that front.
You’ve been told in the past that you need corrective lenses. You’ve chosen to go with contacts but the ones that you’ve been given are so uncomfortable and don’t seem to be helping with your condition at all. You’ve elected to just not wear any corrective lenses because of this which is only making your situation worse.
If this sounds like you then you should talk to your doctor about scleral contact lenses. Scleral contacts are comfortable as well as help with many of the rarest eye conditions. You can also get special effect ones that can grant you vision while your cosplay.
To help you decide if you’re ready to talk to your contact lens specialist optometrist about these contacts, here is a complete guide on these benefits and more.
1. They’re More Comfortable
There are many patients who look at scleral lenses and get more than a little intimidated by their size. They’re meant to cover the user’s entire eye which is where they got their name.
It’s for this reason that potential users are afraid that they won’t be very comfortable but this fear is unwarranted. Sclera lenses are custom made for the patient so they’re actually way more comfortable than other lenses.
The lenses don’t move around too much because they’re made to fit your eye perfectly. This means you’ll never have to worry about them becoming painfully dislodged.
They’re also a fairly gentle fit. There is little to no pressure or compression to the tissues in your eye.
2. They will Work When Nothing Else Will
If you have a certain eye issue that none of your other contacts or glasses seems to solve, then sclera lenses may be the thing that you need. For one, they’re custom made to not only fit your eyes but also to deal with your condition.
For another, they create a fluid layer which not only keeps your eyes hydrated all day long without the need for drops but also helps regulate the shape of your cornea. You’ll immediately notice a positive difference.
A lot more work goes into scleral lenses than other contacts. This is because again, scleral lenses are custom made to fit your eyes and deal with any conditions that you have.
What price would you put on your eyesight? Scleral lenses can help you to see again, giving you the freedom to have a job, drive a car, and live the life you want.
Private Health Insurance applies to scleral lenses just like other contact lenses. They normally last for two years with normal use.
If you’re thinking of investing in scleral lenses, you’ll find that the benefits outweigh the money that you spent on them.
4. Promote the Healing of the Ocular Surface
Scleral contacts protect the surface of your eyes while also correcting your vision. They do this by opening your eye to an oxygen permeable fluid chamber. This keeps any irritants from getting into your eyes.
To this end, the lenses allow the ocular surface of your eyes to heal because nothing can get in and scratch it. This will be a huge help if you’ve had a corneal transplant or have suffered through some sort of chemical damage. Your eyes will be able to heal and adjust.
5. Keratoconus
If you have keratoconus you’ll need contacts that won’t move around too much when you blink. To this end, if you get regular contact lenses when you have this condition they may be too uncomfortable to deal with or worse, damage your eyes.
Scleral lenses are traditionally prescribed to people who have hard-to-fit eyes. They will be the only contacts that will be able to centre correctly on your eyes if you have keratoconus.
6. Other Eye Issues
Keratoconus isn’t the only eye condition that these contacts can help with. Again, they’re the perfect thing to protect the surface of your eyes if you’ve had a corneal implant or chemicals have gotten into your eyes.
They also help if you have uncomfortably dry eyes from conditions like Stevens-Johnson syndrome or Sjogren’s syndrome. These lenses even combat severe cases of astigmatism.
7. Special Effects
You don’t have to have some sort of eye condition or bad vision to be prescribed scleral contacts. Some choose to get them for purely cosmetic purposes.
They can drastically change the look of your eyes so that makes them perfect for theatrical and cosplay purposes. Keep in mind that these contacts are usually only for aesthetics. They usually don’t have the same benefits as normal scleral lenses.
8. Caring for Them
You would think that because the lenses are special that the caring instructions would be a little more complex than regular contacts but this isn’t the case. For the most part, the caring instructions are the same. You take them out at the end of the day, don’t put them under tap water, and don’t swim, sleep or take a bath with them in.
The only difference is they need to soak in a particular type of solution but your eye doctor will provide this for you or at the very least, tell you what solution to use.
Talk to Your Optometrist About Scleral Contact Lenses
If your regular contact lenses aren’t cutting it anymore, (or if they never did) try talking to your eye doctor about scleral contact lenses. They will be custom made to fit your particular condition while not being too much more expensive than the lenses you have now. Start seeing in comfort.
Are you ready to get yourself into a new pair of lenses? Contact us today to make yourself an appointment.
Vision problems are on the rise for kids in Australia. In fact, one in four Australian children is living with an undiagnosed eye problem.
With so many children beginning to struggle with vision problems, there’s also an increase in the need for glasses and contact lenses.
Are you considering getting contact lenses for your child? Are you a little nervous about whether they’re a good fit for them?
If you’re on the fence about contacts for kids, keep reading.
Listed below are eight things you ought to consider before you buy them.
1. Some Kids are Better Candidates than Others
It’s a misconception that contact lenses are only for teenagers and adults.
There are plenty of children who do just fine while wearing prescription contact lenses. At the same time, though, some children are better candidates for contacts than others.
If you’re not sure if your child is ready for contact lenses, ask yourself the following questions:
Do they have good personal hygiene habits?
Do they keep their room and bathroom clean?
Do they follow through with their other responsibilities (schoolwork, chores, etc.)
Do they need frequent reminders to keep up with everyday tasks?
If your child has good personal hygiene and doesn’t have trouble keeping up with everyday responsibilities, they can likely handle the responsibility of wearing contact lenses.
If they’re a bit careless or irresponsible, you may want to work with them on these things before you purchase contacts for them.
2. Contacts are Great for Sports
If your child plays sports or is generally active, contact lenses are a great option to consider.
Contact lenses provide them with a lot of flexibility and will save them from having to continually push a pair of glasses up the bridge of their nose while they’re playing sports, dancing, or participating in other extracurricular activities.
Contact lenses can reduce injury risk, too. If their glasses are struck and break while playing, they could end up with a serious eye problem.
Contacts improve your child’s vision without creating any kind of discomfort or safety issue.
3. Contacts Can Boost Self-Esteem
In a perfect world, your child would feel confident while wearing glasses to correct their vision problems. That’s not always the case, though.
Some kids simply feel better and more like themselves when they’re wearing contacts instead of glasses.
If your child regularly complains about wearing glasses, or if they conveniently “forget them” when they leave for school each day, contacts might be a good option to try instead.
4. Parents Need to Teach Healthy Habits
As a parent, it’s important to understand the key role you play in ensuring your child becomes a successful contact lens wearer.
You will need to work with them and teach them how to keep their contacts clean and well-maintained.
You may also have to remind them to take their contacts out, clean them properly, or store them in their case for the first few days or weeks after they get them.
Before you purchase contacts for your child, make sure that you are up to the task of getting them in the habit of caring for them first.
5. Kids Must See an Eye Doctor First
Before your child gets contact lenses, they need to see the optometrist first.
An optometrist will ensure that your child gets the right pair of contact lenses for their specific needs.
The optometrist can also provide you with tips to help your child get used to wearing contacts and get in the habit of caring for them the right way.
Always buy your child’s contact lenses from a registered optometrist. Don’t try to purchase discounted lenses, even if you’re shopping for a non-prescription pair.
6. A Slow Transition Works Best
If your child has been wearing glasses for a long time, it’s best to transition them slowly from glasses to contacts. They don’t have to throw them away and wear contacts all the time right from the start.
When they get their first pair of lenses, continue to use their glasses as their primary vision correcting method. Then, they can try wearing contact lenses on the weekends so they can practice in a low-stakes way.
Once they’re comfortable with that, they can try wearing their lenses at school or during the week, too.
7. Daily Disposables are a Good Option
If you’re worried about your child’s ability to keep their contact lenses clean and in good shape, you may want to start them with daily disposables.
Daily disposables eliminate the need for cleaning and the need for specific storage practices.
They’re much more convenient and are great for your kids and those who don’t have the best track record when it comes to keeping things clean.
8. Contact Lenses Can Slow Nearsightedness Progression
There is some research that suggests that wearing contact lenses can also slow down the progression of nearsightedness in children.
Vision problems, in general, are on the rise among Australian kids, but nearsightedness is increasingmore than other vision issues.
A certain type of contact lenses, known as orthokeratology, help to change the shape of the cornea, which is the clear front portion of the eye.
These lenses are meant to be worn at night. They change the shape of the cornea while the wearer sleeps, and then the wearer doesn’t have to worry about wearing lenses or glasses during the day.
Order Contacts for Kids in Perth Today
In a lot of cases, purchasing contacts for kids can be a great option.
Contact lenses give them the flexibility they need while playing sports or engaging in other activities, and there’s no risk of them losing them or breaking them — which isn’t always the case when you’re dealing with regular eyeglasses.
Are you ready to buy contacts for your kids? Before you go ahead and order them, be sure to schedule an eye exam.
If you live in or around the Perth area, come see us at Ezekiel Eyes today.
We make it easy and convenient for you to schedule your kids’ exam and order their first pair of contact lenses.
Ever heard of Multifocal Lenses? Getting the right ones is very important!
Without the right lenses, you can struggle to see at work for reading and looking at a presentation. Or you may be caught without your reading glasses, and have to borrow some from a friend.
Listen as Damon Ezekiel explains how to get the right Multifocal Lenses in this short video:
https://youtu.be/4fd3cDE0BY8
Here is the full text from the video:
(Leigh) Welcome, everyone. I’m here with Damon Ezekiel, owner of Ezekiel Eyes. Welcome, Damon.
(Damon) Thank you very much.
(Leigh) Tell me a bit about the way that you approach glasses and getting them right for patients.
(Damon) Leigh, I’m very lucky that I have an optical dispenser who’s been in the optical world for, I think Tom’s been in it for like 25 to 30 years. Very similar to myself. He’s old-school technical trained as an optical technician dispenser. He is very clever at what he does.
A lot of patients come in and they’re like, I’ve tried multifocals and it’s nightmare but multifocal spectacles don’t have to be a nightmare!
There’s a couple of combinations. We need to get the right prescription and that’s what Kai, my colleague, and I do at Ezekiel Eyes.
But then Tom takes his expertise and makes sure that we’ve got the right frame for your face to match that prescription.
There’s no good getting a great looking frame but this prescription’s not gonna fit into it.
Then the important thing is to get these optical centres exactly where we need them. Tom will do that.
We’ll make sure we get the distance between your pupils right but also the height. Unless everything marries together, we’ve got the right frame for your shape to marry in with the prescription and then we get the heights and the distance between your pupils right.
The next thing is we need to get the right type of lens ’cause there’s a stack of different type of lenses, if you’re a:
first time wearer of multifocal lenses,
if you’re an experienced wearer,
what do you need them for?
Do you need them more for distance or computer reading?
We’re going to tailor make what you need. There’s a whole combination and that’s what we do at Ezekiel Eyes.
Whether it’s Kai, my colleague optometrist, or myself, and then we bring Tom in, who’s the optical dispenser, to get that right frame and combination. It’s not a matter of, oh this’ll do, good luck. It’s a matter of getting all these aspects married together. That’s on the glasses side.
(Leigh) Absolutely.
(Damon) You can get Multifocal Contact Lenses too
We can give you contact lenses that are multifocal, bifocal, and there’s lots of different combinations.
It’s a matter of getting the right prescription, working out the curve on the front of your eye, and then trying to work out what do you want.
Leigh, you might just want contact lenses for sport or social, or you want contact lenses full time.
It’s a matter of working out when you want them and what do you want them for:
Do you need them, you just want them in a work environment for distance, computer, and reading?
You just want them when you’re playing indoor cricket?
We need to know what you want. There’s lots of different options in the contact lens world.
We try to marry everything into what your desires are and then we can see what is available for you.
If you’re a contact lens wearer, you’ll always need glasses as a backup. Depending on your age and what you need, we’d run with a multifocal pair of glasses.
That’s where you spend the time to get to know me and my needs and you can recommend the best solution.
There’s lots of different labs out there, whether they’re in the contact lens world or in the spectacle world and same again, exactly as you said, Leigh, finding out what do you need.
What are your wants and then we can go, all right, this lab, that’s an option, but this lab will really make exactly what we need for your particular needs in your glasses or in the contact lens world.
(Leigh) We value our eyes. Our eyes are so important so why not get the best for our eyes?
(Damon) Absolutely. Unfortunately, we see patients who have gone off and had surgery or things have gone astray.
It’s not until things have gone the wrong way that then they go, “I’ve only got one pair of eyes”. Why didn’t I do this, that, or the other? Yes, they are very valuable!
I don’t think enough of us realise how valuable their eyes are. If you can imagine if something had gone wrong or something’s gone astray, I have patients who come in who just say, “Oh my goodness, what would happen if I lost my vision?” A lot of us don’t value what we have until we lose it.
That’s where we like to treat you as an individual and work out what do you need, Leigh? What are your desires? What do you want?
You want contact lenses socially but I’m happy with my glasses during the day. That’s great. We’ll work out what’s gonna work for you. That’s a matter of finding the right type of frame, the right type of lens for your prescription and for you.
(Leigh) You can really help me to get over the line, to be able to work the way that I want to, to function the way that I want to.
(Damon) Absolutely. There’s more than one option.
We will show you all the options and explain why this lens is thinner and lighter than this one and the advantages of that. Is that good for you? It might not be, you might want to look at a different option, great. Let’s look at it and we’ll find out what is out there for you.
We do a lot of different options. Tom’s fantastic at going to various labs and finding out, you know, we’ve got this prescription, what can we do? Can we do thinner and lighter? If so, how much thinner and lighter? Then we can present you with all the different options and the cost options.
Some of the lenses we do buy in will come from overseas. They’ll take two or three weeks in the spectacle lenses because they’re gonna be super duper thin and light but it’s worth it if that’s what you desire and that’s what you need.
(Leigh) That’s great. I like how you go to the nth degree to help people.
(Damon) We don’t mind doing that. That’s what we do. We’re happy to spend another three or four weeks finding out what our options are instead of going, here you go, you’ve only got one option. The lenses are gonna be excessively thick and tough. It’s like, now hang on a minute, let’s see what we can do. As long as you’re not in a hurry, we prefer to take the time.
(Leigh) Yeah, that’s really good. Fantastic. Thanks very much, Damon, for talking to us about your philosophy.
(Damon) Thanks for your time.
(Leigh) Yeah. Thanks everyone for watching. Please like and share this video. Stay tuned for more. Thanks.
What is the next step?
Make an Appointment for an eye test now and talk to Damon or Rhiannon about Multifocal Lenses!
Looking for the best eye drops for Dry Eyes in Perth?
There are two eye drops that we love to recommend to our patients.
Hylo-Forte is a preservative-free eye drop. This means that there are no chemicals that can make your eyes irritated.
The other benefit is that you can use these drops with contact lenses. This includes soft contact lenses, hard contact lenses, rigid gas permeable contact lenses, orthok lenses and scleral contact lenses.
Ever had to throw out drops because they’ve been open for 28 days?
Hylo-Forte has a use-by of six months! This means that you can safely use it as much as you like. Keep one at work near your computer. Keep one at home for the end of a long day. Your eyes will feel refreshed by Hylo-Forte!
Nova Tears is a brand new eyedrop for dry eyes that doesn’t sting! The drop is so small, that you’ll hardly feel it when you put a drop in.
There’s a unique way to put a drop in, without having to squeeze the bottle. Damon or Kai can show you how to do it.
Here’s your bonus!
When you purchase Hylo-Forte or Nova Tears at Ezekiel Eyes, buy five bottles and get the sixth free! Get your card stamped each time to earn your free bottle!
So if you’re looking for the best eye drops for dry eyes in Perth, buy your eye drops from us!
