17 August 2021

Eye unit staff running challenge

Consultant Christine Rennie and staff from the Southampton Eye Unit are running in the ABP Southampton races this September.

 I have worked in the eye unit at University Hospital Southampton (UHS) since 2005, and spent 12 years as a consultant focusing on macular degeneration and diabetic eye disease.

I am very proud of where I work, as Southampton’s eye unit is the leading provider of eye care services on the south coast, dealing with around 90,000 patients annually.

It has been a tough year for everyone in UHS, and while we may not have had Covid+ patients like in ICU, it has really hit us as a team dealing with appointment backlogs and seeing staff redeployed.

We have a fantastic group of doctors, nurses and allied staff, and I am excited to see this endeavor bring us all together, especially as sadly we lost two colleagues, Ennil and Kathryn, over the last year.

So far we have a group of ten of us running in the ABP Southampton races, raising money for the eye unit and Southampton Hospitals Charity.

I’m not really a runner, but a friend asked me to help her train for the London Marathon. That training is going well, and after I’d completed my first few 10km’s something clicked and I’m hooked.

The half marathon (13.1 miles) will still be a massive challenge for me as I’ve never run that far, but I’m very excited for it and we will have a lot of people from our department cheering us on the day too.

Everyone is taking on their own challenge distance wise, but we already have such team spirit. It seemed like the perfect opportunity to bring everyone together to say we are Team Ophthalmology!

All money raised will enhance the amazing services we already provide in the eye unit, including additional vision assessment tools for our paediatric team, some specialist equipment for our wards, as well as equipment for our new patient support service.

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