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Welcome to Friends of Bristol Eye Hospital
Treatment for all patients has been greatly enhanced by our supporters.
For every £1 raised, we spend 95p supporting the hospital, 2p running the charity and 3p on publicity or raising funds.
Make a donation
You can donate in many ways, including cash, cheques, BACS, debit or credit card.
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grants made
To contact us, we recommend that you telephone or email (details in Contact). We all work from home and post sent via the hospital can be delayed. If you need to post anything, please call or email and we will give you a home address. Thank you.
If you plan to visit an NHS hospital in Bristol or Weston, please see:
Ophthalmology Equipment for Weston General Hospital
The ophthalmology service at Weston General Hospital includes adult and paediatric services. Expanding the service in Weston avoids families having to travel up to Bristol for their care and allows precious resource to be used at BEH for Bristol-area patients.
The service required some additional ophthalmology equipment which the Friends were happy to fund to improve patient care and boost staff morale.
This grant cost £11,202.
23 February 2024
Laser Teaching Attachment
The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) recommend that selective laser trabeculoplasty (SLT) should be offered to all suitable patients newly diagnosed with ocular hypertension (OHT) or open angle glaucoma (OAG) as their initial treatment in place of eye drops.
Compared with medication, SLT provides a stable drop-free high pressure control for patients with a reduced need for surgery at a lower cost. Based on the evidence, SLT is the most cost-effective first-line treatment option for OAG and OHT, also providing better clinical outcomes.
To meet this new requirement, BEH needed to train optometrists to deliver SLT. Glaucoma specialist optometrists are already successfully delivering this service around the UK including other centres of excellence such as Moorfields and Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. It also frees up senior medical staff from delivering laser to see more complex glaucoma patients.
To safely train optometrists, BEH needed a teaching attachment for the laser so that the trainee can both observe treatment and be observed. The Friends were happy to meet this need.
This grant cost £6,830.
23 February 2024
Improved staff facilities in the Galleries Diagnostic Assessment Centre
We have paid for the repair and decoration of facilities for staff in the Bristol Eye Hospital Diagnostic Assessment Centre which opened in the old Post Office in the Galleries Shopping Centre in 2023.
Staff working in the diagnostic service provide an excellent service which has been highly praised in feedback from patients. The improved ‘back of house’ facilities provide a welcoming and comfortable area for staff to relax in during their breaks, enabling them to return to work suitably refreshed.
This grant cost £5,610.
26 January 2024
Thank you to all our many supporters
We strive to thank all our donors promptly – unless we are specifically asked not to thank them.
We receive many donations from people who choose to remain anonymous or who do not give us any means of contacting them to say thank you. We regret being unable to thank such donors other than by expressing our grateful appreciation here.
There are also currently over 60 people who donate regularly – and some have done so for very many years. Our longest regular donor made their first payment in June 1983! The number of regular donors and the total they donate increases steadily every year. We do not thank you regularly but please be assured that your donations are very warmly received and we are most grateful for your ongoing support.
27 September 2021, updated 17 January 2024
“PLEASE LOOK INSIDE”
Our promotional leaflet “PLEASE LOOK INSIDE” is on display in the hospital. The leaflet briefly describes what we do, with some examples of grants we’ve made. It also encourages people to join us, setting out different ways of donating and how to request information.
The leaflet also contains a loose stand-alone form to join or donate to the Friends.
9 November 2022, updated 20 October 2023
From our archives
A young patient admires the inmates of the aquarium purchased by the Friends in 2011 in the then-new children’s unit in the Outpatient Department on Level 1. The aquarium has been maintained by the Friends ever since and remains very popular with children.
