If you require a consultation with A/Prof Ghabrial you must first have a referral, which can be either from another specialist, a general practitioner or an optometrist. You then call or email the Macquarie Street practice to make an appointment. Sometimes patient’s have their appointment made for them directly from the referrer’s rooms. The consultation is where A/Prof Ghabrial will assess the reason for your visit. It is a good idea to prepare beforehand the questions you would like answered. Once you make contact with our helpful staff they will obtain all your relevant details at the time of your call.

You should have these details on hand:

• your Medicare card number
• Department of Veterans Affairs (DVA) number
• health insurance details
• any medications you may take.

Alternatively, patient’s can also complete their details on the patient registration form available below:

Patient Registration Form

If you are a DVA gold card holder and require transport, we can arrange for you to be picked up from your home to your appointment and then home again.

Once you have had your consultation with A/Prof Ghabrial, your fee is paid in full and the Medicare rebate is processed for you on the spot. Any further appointments or surgery bookings are made then with detailed information given to you if you are booked in for day surgery.

At any stage you are always able to call us with questions you may have regarding your consultation or prospective surgery and we will be very happy to assist you.

Our day surgery is in the same suite as our consulting rooms on Level 7. On the day of your surgery you will be here for two hours, anywhere between 8am and 3pm.

When you arrive the admin staff will go through your surgery documents, make your post operative appointment, get the number of the person who will pick you up, and settle the payment for your surgery.

The nurse then brings you into the anaesthetic bay of the hospital, checks details with you again and makes you comfortable for your surgery. At this point you will be introduced to the anaesthetist who will go through some questions with you and prepare you for your anaesthetic.

You will also speak with A/Prof Ghabrial at this point, and he will confirm again the surgery you are about to have. The anaesthetist will give you medication via a cannula placed in your hand which will make you feel sleepy. You will then be wheeled into the theatre for your operation.

Assisting A/Prof Ghabrial is another doctor, “the assistant” . In our surgery we have assistants who are studying to be ophthalmologists, doing research related work, and general practitioners with a special interest in day surgery for the eye. Their main role in the operation is to scrub with A/Prof Ghabrial and assist in your operation.

The nurse in theatre helps the surgeon, anaesthetist and assistant to make sure everything goes smoothly.

The type of operations A/Prof Ghabrial does are typically thirty to forty minutes. After the operation is finished the nurse and the anasethetist wheel you in to the recovery area where the recovery nurse will take care of you as you wake up from the anaesthetic. You may feel a bit dizzy or light headed as you wake up from the anaesthetic. and it usually takes about 45 minutes to wake up from the anaesthetic. You will be given pain relief if you require it.

Once you have moved from the bed to the recliner, the nurse will provide you with a beverage and a sandwich.

During this time the admin staff will have called your carer and once the nurse observes that you are ready you will be taken to the post operative instruction room. Here the nurse will explain the post operative instructions to you and your carer and provide you with a post operative instruction leaflet which has your post operative appointment on it and all other detailed post operative instructions relevant to the type of surgery you have had.