Dr Mhairi Day
Senior Lecturer, Registered Optometrist
Department of Vision Sciences
Mhairi Day is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Vision Sciences in the School of Health and Life Sciences. After graduating from GCU with a BSc (Hons) in Optometry in 2002, she undertook her pre-registration year in the Vision Centre at GCU. Mhairi then worked as a research assistant with the anterior eye research group at the University before completing her PhD on the topic of myopia and accommodation between 2004-2007.
She subsequently undertook a post-doctoral position researching shape and motion perception in 2007. In 2008, Mhairi was appointed as a Lecturer and was promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2012.
Over the last 20 years, Mhairi’s research has centred mainly on accommodation and myopia. Mhairi was awarded a College of Optometrists Research Fellowship Award in 2008 and the Neil Charman Medal for Outstanding Research as part of the College of Optometrists Research Excellence Awards in 2011.
Mhairi launched the Myopia Management Clinic at the Vision Centre in 2016, whose patients are a variety of children at risk of progressing myopia. Her current research interests include the investigation of the roles of the accommodation response, of pupil size, of choroidal thickness and of light in myopia, evaluation of the effectiveness of myopia management treatments, the risk of visual impairment from myopia and the cost-effectiveness of myopia management treatments.
Mhairi’s teaching portfolio includes subjects such as ocular disease and therapeutics, professional standards and clinical governance, general and specialist communication skills relating to ocular disease and independent prescribing, myopia and myopia management. Mhairi has been the Course Lead for the Independent Prescribing for Optometrists CPD course since 2019. She holds the College of Optometrists’ Diploma in Therapeutics (Independent Prescribing) and is an Examiner for the College of Optometrists.