A Word from the President

10 Years of SAoO: A Look Back and a Look Ahead

Dear Colleagues
Dear Members

We are actually already looking back on 10 Years of the Swiss Academy of Ophthalmology.

The Swiss Academy of Ophthalmology is built on several pillars. In 2016, the founders felt a strong need to channel the abundance of continuing education events and, by establishing a shared platform, lay the groundwork for a benchmark and continuing education platform that everyone could use as a guide. It was also a major priority to be able to offer everything that the SOG lacks the time, resources, or capacity to provide. I discussed this initiative at the time at the VOFIS General Assembly, which was then chaired by Patrick Wirth, and had it approved by the industry.

No sooner had we—that is, Daniel Mojon and I—begun to develop the idea and made a few phone calls than a thousand thoughts and ideas came flooding in. Not only did we need to merge the Swiss Refractive and Lucerne Eye Meetings with ophtag, but Ulrich Lachmund also thought it was a very good idea to integrate his lacrimal system training program and the associated society, Christian Prünte felt the project was the perfect opportunity to finally establish the Swiss Ophthalmological Research Assistant position, and above all, the late Albert Franceschetti was thrilled that we could finally found the academy he had always been convinced needed to exist. We were also able to recruit Theo Signer from Vista to serve on the board of trustees.

So, armed with all these ideas and the characters that went with them, we got to work and, after much deliberation over the best organizational structure, founded the SAoO Foundation. We actually wanted to simply call it SAO, but the name and logo were already taken: Recently, it has become a computer game (Sword of Arts), which wasn’t the case in 2016, but SAO is also an NGO founded in 2016 for women fleeing their homes. A Swiss detective school that has existed since 1983 also goes by that name (Swiss Agents Organization), and last but not least, the South Asian Ophthalmological Academy bears the same name. We didn’t want to provoke any conflicts.

We haven’t achieved all of our goals. In particular, our original motivation—namely, that there are far too many professional development courses in Switzerland and that we finally needed to bring some order to this jungle—has been a massive disappointment. We weren’t even able to make the platform truly open and attractive to everyone internally, and the industry continues to sponsor a wide variety of marketing events for all sorts of smaller and larger companies—or would-be players. However, as long as the industry claims it has no choice—after all, these are good customers—we unfortunately can’t do anything about it, and if they are good customers, then the industry shouldn’t complain that sponsoring continuing education is so terribly expensive.

I don’t want to bore you with lengthy historical digressions, but the fact that we had hired Maria Oehler as our secretary after she had left the SOG was viewed by the SOG board as theft and provocation—to put it mildly, given the harsher language used at the time. Of course, her expertise and drive had helped us greatly in the beginning. However, the Academy’s growth then led to misunderstandings and overburdening, and mistakes were made on all sides. A restructuring of the secretariat and a reorganization of the foundation’s structure were unavoidable. This has since happened more than once, as some of you have surely noticed, and usually not without some controversy.

In some cases, this might even lead to the suspicion that Thumm is simply a power-hungry person who insists on having everything done his way. I can’t agree with that: I’m only president of the Academy because no one else is willing to take on this far-from-easy job.

All joking aside: The core members of the Foundation Board are convinced that we need an academy that, above all, provides substantial support for the needs of our colleagues working in the field and complements the SOG—one that not only advances our specialty but also helps broaden our horizons in general.

We had the idea of a Swiss AAD. We’re not quite there yet, but we’re doing our best and, above all, we’re not giving up.

Just one of many examples: We had always emphasized that it would be a good idea for Switzerland to have a refraction course as well. Our persistence in pursuing this idea ultimately led the SOG to take the initiative itself, for which we can only be grateful.

So as not to bore you further with the history, let’s take a look at the future, which fills me with joy and confidence: The collaboration between SAoO and SOG has begun with the job description and training course for the Ophthalmic Medical Practice Assistant (OMPA) and will almost certainly continue to develop; the executive boards have agreed to hold joint meetings.

Nevertheless—or perhaps precisely for that reason—we will continue to expand our member services, so that it will be worthwhile in many ways not only to attend the conference but also to support the foundation by becoming a member of the association. This year, you’ll get to experience firsthand examples of these expanded services for our members.

Thank you for your attention, and we look forward to continuing our successful collaboration

Dietmar Thumm

President of the Swiss Academy of Ophthalmology