In Focus: AOP sets out vision for optometry

A new Strategy for Optometry document created by the Association of Optometrists (AOP) aimed at MPs, NHS commissioners and other healthcare decision makers has set out the organisation’s vision for how optometry may look in the future and how it can play a bigger part in the delivery of NHS care in the medium-to-long term.

The AOP said the strategy laid out where optometrists were qualified and equipped to deliver more NHS work and how doing so could relieve pressure on overstretched hospital eye and emergency departments. Against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, the AOP added eye care in the UK had gone through fundamental change as optical practices provided crucial eye care to patients when hospitals and GPs could not.