The Clinical Conversations series feature speakers from across the country to deliver informative, interactive and interesting talks around health and delivery. There will be opportunities for you to ask questions live on the night and we hope these talks will encourage discussions during and after each seminar.
Vision loss and cognitive decline are not parallel problems. They collide in everyday clinical practice. This clinical conversation will explore how poor vision accelerates loss of independence, falls, social withdrawal, and cognitive load in older adults, particularly those living with dementia and glaucoma. Using glaucoma as a case study of a chronic, neurodegenerative condition that demands lifelong adherence, the conversation will highlight a critical gap in current care: eye-care services are largely designed for people without memory, communication, or capacity challenges. Drawing on a national survey examining barriers and facilitators to eye-care access across the general community, people living with dementia and carers, and individuals with glaucoma, this session will unpack the structural, cognitive, and service-design barriers clinicians see daily but systems continue to ignore. The presentation will conclude with practical, clinician-led strategies that can be implemented now to create more dementia-aware, accessible eye-care pathways, and outline how this work is informing future service redesign and policy. The core message is simple but urgent: vision care is brain care, and healthy ageing requires services that see the whole person, not just the eye.
Dr Samran Sheriff is an early career health services and systems researcher at the Australian Institute of Health Innovation (AIHI), Macquarie University, and a sessional teaching academic within the Faculty of Science and Engineering. Dr Sheriff holds a PhD in Clinical Neuro-ophthalmology and Vision Science from Macquarie University (2023), awarded with the Vice-Chancellor’s Commendation for Academic Excellence. He is a clinically trained orthoptist and mixed-methods researcher with interdisciplinary expertise spanning ophthalmology, dementia neuroscience, cancer research, genomics in primary care and implementation science. His work focuses on translating emerging diagnostic and precision health innovations into routine clinical care. As a mixed-methods researcher Dr Sheriff has extensive experience in systematic and scoping reviews, meta-analysis, qualitative interviews, health systems evaluation, and implementation frameworks. His methodological skill set enables him to bridge clinical science with policy-relevant health services research, supporting the design, evaluation, and scale-up of complex health interventions.
What is Clinical Conversations?
The Clinical Conversations series feature speakers from across the country to deliver informative, interactive and interesting talks around health and delivery. There will be opportunities for you to ask questions live on the night and we hope these talks will encourage discussions during and after each seminar.
There will be opportunities for you to ask questions live on the night and we hope these talks will encourage discussion during and after each seminar.
There will be 2 AOB CPD points available (pre-approved activity) and each talk will be recorded and multiple-choice questions to complete to check your understanding.
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Topic: |
Seeing Clearly, Ageing Well: Why Vision Care Is Failing Older Adults with Cognitive Impairment – and What Clinicians Can Actually Do About It |
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Speaker: |
Dr Samran Sheriff & Jacinta Walz |
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Date: |
6 May 2026 |
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Time: |
8.00pm AEST |
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Where: |
Zoom Webinar |
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Cost: |
Free for OA members |
OA Sponsorship and Advertising Opportunities
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