Cathy Lewis is the Chief Orthoptist at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne and lecturer in Orthoptics at Latrobe University. Cathy has over 30 years’ experience working and volunteering as an orthoptist, 14 of those years were spent as the sole orthoptist managing and treating paediatric and adult strabismus in a busy ophthalmology outpatient clinic in Arendal, Norway. Passionate about evaluating systems and processes for efficient and effective delivery of paediatric ophthalmic care, Cathy co-developed and implemented several initiatives at the RCH to improve access to patient-centred care, including orthoptist-led clinics and collaborative models of care with external providers. In 2022 Cathy was awarded the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute Small Research Grant to evaluate models of care in the RCH outpatient eye clinic resulting in improved patient experience and clinic throughput, without negatively impacting staff workload. In 2024, together with Dr Anu Mathew, Cathy was awarded a Frank Billson Research Scholarship from the RCH Foundation, for their project “Paediatric Ophthalmic Care – Improving Access Through Collaboration and Education”. This project aims to improve access to paediatric eyecare by developing online paediatric ophthalmic education modules and collaborative care resources for optometrists in the community to enhance capacity and the paediatric eye care workforce.