FTP warns on performance

A GOC fitness to practise committee has given a warning to optometrist Matthew David Ingram Austen over his future performance.

The council found that Austen had not referred a patient for ophthalmological opinion or orthoptic assessment despite the ocular history of the patient's mother who is amblyopic and anisometropic. During examinations by Austen a number of factors became apparent including consistently poorer visual acuity in the right eye, variability in stereopsis tests and continued difficulty in achieving accurate and repeatable measures of vision.

The committee found that Austen's fitness to practise as an optometrist was not impaired because the threshold of impairment had not been breached, but warned Austen to ensure he undertakes continuing professional development in the area of clinical management of anomalies of binocular vision and refraction in paediatric optometry. The warning will remain on the register for a period of 12 months.