Ininder Senior II Orthoptist "I assess vision and eye movements to see if eyes are working properly and if they're not what can be done to help. I work with a team of eye specialists."

Ininder works in the busy Birmingham and Midlands Eye Centre. She's one of a team of eye specialists seeing referrals from, among others, school screening, GPs and Accident and Emergency (A&E) Departments.

Why do most of us think of eye specialists as opticians?

Probably because you see the word all the time in High Streets. Shall I explain what the different eye specialists are?

Please.

The opticians most of us meet in the High Street either dispense glasses or perform the glasses check or do both. They use a prescription for glasses to supply you with them. They fit you with your frames and make sure the glasses are comfortable and are correct according to the prescription.

An optometrist is qualified to prescribe glasses and contact lenses.

An ophthalmologist can carry out a glasses check (like the optometrist) but is also qualified to diagnose and treat eye diseases. So he/she will look, for instance, at the back of your eye or the lens in your eye.

I'm an orthoptist. I look at eye movements, can carry out vision assessment and visual field tests. I'm looking to see if your eyes are working together properly.

And if they aren't?

I make a first diagnosis of what the problem might be and refer you to one of our ophthalmologists.

What sort of people do you do this for and what might you find wrong?

I work with children and babies a lot. But there's also a heavy workload with adults as well.

Must be hard to check the sight of babies.

The hardest bit's usually waking them up! Babies like high contrasts so we use a black and white striped image based test. We go behind a screen so the baby isn't distracted by us and move the striped image around. We peep through a hole to see whether the baby follows the pattern.

What about children?

I check each eye separately to see if they're both the same. Children sometimes have a lazy eye – this is where the vision is less in one eye and the eye doesn't bother to do any work. We'll work out whether the child can be treated with glasses or with an eye patch. We might find a squint – this is when an eye turns out or in, or up or down. It might be treated with glasses, exercises or an operation.

We go out to schools regularly to check children that are just starting school. I like that, we go to a huge number of schools, I really like the change of environment.

Do you find many children with eyes not working properly?

We pick up a fair few lazy eyes. We refer them to the Eye Centre.

What sort of adults?

Often they may come in from the eye casualty service. They might have double vision for instance. We check whether this is due to eye muscles or if there's a problem in one eye only. We check a whole range of things, like which eye muscles and nerves are working. We'll ask what the patient's general health's like to find a possible cause for any eye muscle weakness. We need to make a first diagnosis and refer the patient on – after deciding on the urgency or otherwise of possible future treatment.

How do you treat double vision?

We might need to monitor changes, or we might suggest it could be helped with glasses with prisms.

Do you see adults with squints?

Sometimes. We'll take measurements. See if they're suitable for surgery, if they want it, that is. The ophthalmologist can give an injection that lets us see how effective surgery will be; the effect wears off after about three months. Slight squints can be sorted out with exercises.

And you see a lot of adults?

Especially on Mondays.

Not because of fights!

Well... These will come via the eye casualty service. We'll almost certainly be liaising with the maxillo-facial department (part of Ears, Nose & Throat) to make sure eye movements aren't being restricted. We see adults on the neuro-ophthalmology clinics as well.

Anything you don't like about your job?

Too much paperwork.

What do you like most about your job?

The variety. And I like teaching eye specialists who are still training (I mostly do one-to-one tuition.) I like investigating each new case – I'm often the first port of call; I need to come to a conclusion as to a possible diagnosis. You have to be a people person; so I love meeting all the people.