“The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Ophthalmologists annual scientific congress was held in Adelaide this November.

Dr Peter Beckingsale was invited to present in 2 sessions covering his specialty interests of corneal and cataract surgery. The first session was entitled “Corneal transplantation: more than 100 years old and still going strong” and Dr Beckingsale provided an update on “Indications and long term trends in corneal endothelial surgery”. The second session was on “Surgical coaching and performance review”. This innovative session examined the importance of coaching in maintaining high performance in any field of endeavour, but in this case specifically cataract surgery. Australian cataract surgeons were invited to anonymously upload a video of a routine cataract surgery case and the videos were then reviewed and graded. It was a fascinating experience, as it is rare to get to watch other consultants do routine bread and butter cases. Surgeons get to watch novice surgeons during their training and complex cases at meetings, but hardly ever see expert surgeons performing routine surgery and many tips and pearls were gleaned. No matter what your area of expertise, watching another expert do something you think of as simple can yield very useful insights.”