BLOG: Love Your Lenses Week, 25 - 31 March 2017

Much is made of the importance of industry ‘working together’ for the common good. It’s the sort of mantra that often gets trotted out but rarely materialises into something tangible which actually makes a long-lasting difference.
Hopefully, a recent collaboration between the BCLA and the GOC will do just that. 

We teamed up as part of the forthcoming ‘Love Your Lenses’ campaign. A full week of activity will take place later this month (March 25-31) aimed at raising awareness among patients of how best to look after their lenses, care for them and get the best out of them.

As part of the campaign we have produced a new infographic focusing on the top five dos and don’ts for contact lens care .
This is based on research carried out to understand more about the behaviour of contact lens wearers, including those who buy online. 
The infographic will be available exclusively to BCLA members as a tear-off pad soon, allowing the information to be handed out to patients quickly and easily.
This forms part of the suite of resources available to BCLA members, including our ever-popular ‘No Water’ stickers, which can be purchased online.

A full campaign toolkit is available for all practitioners to download from the Love Your Lenses website including a press release template to help you raise your profile in your local community.

The research revealed that the advice with the lowest levels of awareness includes the need to replace the lens case at least monthly (61%), the advised method of cleaning the lens case (63%) and not switching the solution they use except on the advice of their practitioner (64%). 

Just over three quarters of respondents have experienced at least one problem in relation to wearing their contact lenses at some point (77%). This is most commonly dry eyes (52%), followed by sore eyes (36%) and damaged a contact lens (29%). 

The findings go on to provide strong evidence in favour of the view that adherence to aftercare advise reduces many of the problems associated with the use of contact lenses. 

Clearly, there is still work to do when it comes to informing patients of the best ways to ‘love your lenses’ but by joining forces we hope to get the message out to more people and make a real difference.