The Royal College of General Practitioners (RCGP) has announced that ageing and sight loss is one of its four clinical priorities for the years 2013 to 2016.

The RCGP will work alongside the UK Vision Strategy and develop a template to assist practitioners to diagnose undetected sight loss amongst older patients. The three-year programme will begin in April 2013 and will serve to enables healthcare professionals to improve the quality of patient care in a clinical setting.

Dr Waqaar Shah, RCGP Ophthalmology Representative stated, "By identifying sight loss at an earlier stage GPs can prevent patients suffering from other issues such as falls and depression which have strong links with sight loss, which will significantly improve the lives of patients."

Anita Lightstone, Programme Director for UK Vision Strategy and Chief Operations Officer for VISION 2020 UK added, "Many older people accept poor vision as part of the natural ageing process but this does not need to be the case. GPs have a vital role to play in raising awareness of the need for them to protect their eye health."

"By making eye health a priority and making ageing and sight loss a particular focus of this programme of work, we hope that we will be able to prevent many elderly patients from losing their sight unnecessarily."