Last month, for the first time since it went digital, the British Ophthalmological Surveillance Unit (BOSU) had a response rate of over 50%, and 31 positive case reports for the deterioration of sight following delay and sympathetic ophthalmia studies.
We encourage all ophthalmologists in the UK to take part in BOSU. It’s easy to do and you’ll be contributing to this unique resource that advances knowledge and improvement of the prevention, treatment and service planning of these disorders.
In months where you have seen no new cases of interest recording your response to the BOSU is a simple process of clicking on the RED ‘nothing to report’ button in your monthly BOSU email. The process for reporting a case and completing the clinical questionnaire is by necessity more complex, but after feedback from ophthalmologists we have redesigned this process to make it easier to complete. Previously respondents were required to login the enter the case details required to create the questionnaire. This stage is now carried out without logging in. So you respondents will only need to login to complete the clinical questionnaire.
If you have a case of interest to report click on the GREEN ‘cases of interest’ button and this will open up the eReporting page:
Enter the number of new cases you have seen for each condition (leaving any you haven’t seen as zero) and then click on submit. This will take you through to the case reminder screen.
At this point you enter the date you saw the patient and a reminder of who the patient is in the ‘Your Reference’ box such as hospital number. This information is for you only and is not submitted to the research team. Then click on ‘Save’, and as long as the date you saw the patient falls after the start of the study you a questionnaire will be created. You will then have the chance to login into the system. Your username is the email address and your password was included in the initial email sent to you when you were registered onto the BOSU system. If you can’t remember or find your password, there is a forgotten password function on the login page and you can use this to reset your password to one of your choosing.
When you login you will go to your BOSU Dashboard and you can access the questionnaires either by clicking on the blue hyperlink or by using the questionnaires button. You can also contact the research team using the messages button or if the case has been entered in error click on the red cross.
The BOSU endeavours to ascertain all cases of the rare conditions by including all ophthalmologists in the UK in the BOSU system. If you are not receiving your BOSU monthly report email or if you would like to change the email address we use please contact [email protected].
Likewise, if you have any further questions, would like any information, or have an idea for a future study please email Barny and he will do his best to help.