Rear Vision

📖 The Scoop

Rear Vision: Celebrating Australia's Early Orthoptists profiles the first 76 Australian orthoptists who trained between 1931 to 1954. The profiles include the orthoptists' place/s of training, where they practised, the positions they held in the professional association, Orthoptic Association of Australia (now Orthoptics Australia), and the social context in which they trained and practised. These accounts provide an insight into the formative years of orthoptics, a profession run solely by female practitioners. These women were inspired to choose a career at a time when many of them were not encouraged to further their knowledge or embark on a career. The individual stories show how orthoptics presented an opportunity to work in an intellectually stimulating career and opened up the prospect of running a professional small business. The social mores of Australian society during the period covered by these profiles dictated that most women worked between leaving school and getting married. After marriage, many orthoptists, like other women in the workforce, ceased employment to manage their homes and bring up their children. Nevertheless, these pioneering women forged the development of orthoptics, at the time, a new allied health profession. A characteristic common to most of these women was a keen and enquiring mind. They were women of great foresight, adaptable to change with a pioneering spirit where sheer determination was required to succeed. They saw the need to establish a national orthoptic association in 1944, the third oldest in the world and built Australia's reputation in the international orthoptic community. A brief history of Orthoptics covering the period 1931 to the mid-1950s precedes the profiles. The historical notes cover the changes and developments in orthoptic training and in clinical practice and research.

Genre: History / Australia & New Zealand (fancy, right?)