The third and final leg

As we enter the third and final leg of the statutory CET cycle, Bill Harvey looks ahead to some highlights in optician over the coming year

As covered extensively in this journal in recent years, the statutory requirement to take part in accredited continuing education and training requires a minimum of 36 points to be gained by registered practitioners by the end of 2006. Failure to do so will result in people being excluded from the GOC register and, therefore, unable to practise.

There are a number of variations and conditions associated with this and, if still in doubt, you could do no worse than visit the optician website (www.opticianonline.net/Home) and follow the 'CET FAQs' link where all will be explained.

As the GOC has stated recently, distance learning is considered an important, valid and useful way of gaining the required number of points. With this in mind, we have stepped up the amount of accredited CET available for subscribers. In doing so, we have developed a more systematic approach to distance learning CET provision which we aim to introduce throughout the coming year as I shall explain later.

A main requirement for CET accreditation is that it falls within the GOC competencies which have been explained over the last few months on our inside back cover. This means that we have produced CET which, according to your feedback, has occasionally been challenging (if not downright difficult). At other times where we have reviewed knowledge and areas considered 'GOC entry level', the exercises have proved easier.
As long as we aim to cover all competency areas, this variability is likely to continue, but we will always monitor our pass rates and look for peaks or troughs to help maintain a reasonable and reliable standard.

Themes

For 2005, optician offered all subscribers well over 40 points in a wide variety of subject areas (including regular contact lens specialist points), well beyond the statutory recommendation to be acquired. The aim for 2006 is to continue along this vein but to increase the breadth of competencies covered.

One way this is to be achieved is to move to producing more articles of a single point accreditation. This will allow the same number of points to be gained while being able to broaden the subject matter described.
As always, the first issue of each month will include a contact lens-related CET article, the first to appear on January 13 as this edition is an extra for the start of the year. To begin with we will cover some areas not examined for a while, including sports vision and contact lenses, solutions, and dry eye management for contact lens wearers.

In the spring we will begin a major series looking at allergy, initially from a more general perspective, but eventually honing down to examine the best way to avoid allergic response in our contact lens patients. Later in the year, and bearing in mind that feedback suggests lens fitting is a competency area many have less confidence in, we will begin a major series going back to the very basics and explaining lens selection, fitting and assessment and follow-up in detail - in effect a complete introductory course for the subject.

Other themes, however, should have equal weighting. It is proposed that the second week of every month will include a CET article on dispensing and lenses. This will include topics as various as safety issues, lens properties and design, and sport- and occupational-specific dispensing. Later in the year, we will also run a 'back to basics' dispensing series.

The idea for this came from feedback from optometrists having to increase their sometimes rusty dispensing knowledge either through changing roles in practice, setting up their own business, or simply having a pre-reg optometrist under the new qualification scheme. It is hoped our significant number of dispensing optician subscribers will also find this useful, but all our other CET will be covering the wider competency brief they now have to encompass.

The third week will be more focused on clinical methods and techniques and include articles on such varied topics as refraction and binocular assessment, low vision, tonometry, ophthalmoscopy and slit-lamp technique.

Week four is a varied bag indeed but will include the bulk of ocular disease articles. As well as our current series on AMD, we will be running a variety of interesting articles on glaucoma which will include information on the very latest theories of aetiology and treatment. Other topics will include scleritis, keratoconus and some further drug-related articles, such as a review of the nature and use of fusidic acid.

Research projects

We are also pleased to be publishing a bimonthly series developed with the Aston Academy in Birmingham which will include CET articles on a range of research projects of particular interest to eye care practitioners. Later this month we will publish the first, which will look at the use of functional MRI in understanding the process of vision.

Whenever there has been a fifth week we have traditionally included an Instrument Review edition. With the plethora of instrument developments currently on the market, we will have to include instrument and equipment-related pieces in other editions also. I also hope to include instrument-specific CET in this occasional fifth edition. The workings, operation and interpretation of such instruments as scanning laser ophthalmoscopy, ocular coherence tomography and analysis of neuroretinal density will be covered.

Add to this the numbers of case studies we will be running, our usual clinical competitions, practical courses aimed at supplementing and complementing the distance learning, and our usual general and related features, then I hope we can make the acquisition of your remaining points both painless and informative.