Churchill Fellowship Travels to Countries with Formal Bioptic Driving Programs

Left: Dr Bradly Dougherty, Associate Pro fessor,  Ohio State University College of Optometry ; Right : Belinda O'Connor, Bioptic Drivers Australia I was honoured to speak with Dr. Bradley E. Dougherty, OD, PhD, Associate Professor at the Ohio State University College of Optometry. Dr. Dougherty’s research interests include driving with central vision impairment, evaluation of new technologies for low vision rehabilitation, visual assessment, and analysis of patient-reported outcome measures to assess the impact of low vision. He also serves as a clinical attending in the Low Vision Rehabilitation Service at Ohio State. Dr. Dougherty and his students have done considerable research into vision and driving including bioptic driving. Further, Dr Dougherty examines patients the optometry clinic making decisions on vision assessments for bioptic driving.   Bradley and I talked about how research is considered for policy and law reform for vision and driving. He noted California hir...

Chuck, Ashley, Dan at West Virginia Division of Driver Rehabilitation Services During my visit to West Virginia, I was fortunate to have the opportunity to participate and observe one of the students enrolled in the WV bioptic driver’s training program participating in an on-foot, then active passenger in-car training exercise taught and reinforced by former instructor, Chuck Huss, COMS, Driver Rehabilitation Specialist. I wholeheartedly believe we need this in Australia. I’ve been a bioptic driver since 2016 where beyond the role of the eye assessment professional there is no training such as this; and getting to do this in practice gave me knowledge to techniques/ issues I had read about and taught myself. This was an opportunity to be taught systematically and learn progressively that has given me new insights to driving that I can’t wait to apply when I get back home to Australia.   Training in the proper and appropriate use of bioptics...