Fodo calls for better use of community eye care resources

Fodo chair Lynda Oliver said the challenges for the vision sector were well set out in the Foresight Project Report by the Optical Confederation earlier this year.

She said: ‘At Fodo, we take these challenges and opportunities with deadly seriousness. They are the harsh realities – and opportunities – of where we will be able to be of value to society in the future. And, on behalf of the sector, we are not about to let that go.

‘This will involve moving rapidly to different models of practice and to wider and higher skilled clinical roles for optometrists and opticians based on a different form of education. What was once the limited preserve of hospital optometry needs to move at scale and pace into the community, with hospital optometrists and others in the hospital eye service taking on roles that ophthalmologists currently perform.