The FOOT Award for the Best Optometrist of the Year (given for the fourth time this year) is an international prize that recognises the academic, research and social achievements of an optometrist in recent years. This year, the scientific committee decided the award should go to the Australian professor Konrad Pesudovs, who currently teaches and conducts research at Flinders University (Adelaide, Australia). The scientific committee responsible for the award is made up of members of the UPC, the Catalan Association of Opticians and Optometrists (COOOC), the Catalan Association of Optometry and Vision Therapy (ACOTV), and the Terrassa City Council.

Konrad Pesudovs was presented with the award by Joan Gispets, the dean of the FOOT, at an event to mark the opening of the academic year 2018–2019 at the School, held on 19 September at the Seu d’Ègara monumental complex in Terrassa. In the inaugural lecture for the academic year, Professor Pesudovs encouraged first-year students in particular to pursue academic and personal excellence and look beyond books to achieve clinical expertise and a balanced philosophy of life.

The patient experience: key to diagnosis

Professor Pesudovs has gained international renown in the field of visual health for having significantly improved the diagnosis of visual diseases and disorders using a methodology that integrates purely optical and visual measurements with the experiences reported by patients. The researcher has shown that it is possible to obtain more reliable and precise diagnoses by placing far greater emphasis on what patients say about how visual disorders affect their everyday lives. He has developed standardised questionnaires to systematise this process and established a series of parameters that allow optometrists to draw clinical conclusions based on patients’ questionnaire responses.

The methodology gives visual health professionals a broader perspective when they perform optometric and ophthalmic tests. The patient and his or her everyday environment become the centre of clinical practice, which is analysed using advanced statistical tools. The method developed by Konrad Pesudovs improves the internal consistency and precision of measurements, thus facilitating more effective diagnosis and management of patients. 

Born in Sydney, Australia in 1969, Professor Pesudovs graduated in Optometry from the University of Melbourne in 1990 and spent two years in a specialised contact lens practice before joining the Department of Ophthalmology at Flinders University, where he completed a PhD in 2000. He is currently a member of the Flinders Centre for Ophthalmology, Eye and Vision Research, which aims to improve outcomes for patients with blinding eye conditions.