Research into the public perceptions of opticians has been published by the GOC.
The research found that 32% of respondents said that they would see a GP first if they woke up with a minor eye health problem as opposed to 25% who would see an optician first.
GOC director of strategy, Alistair Bridge said: ‘We are pleased to see that public confidence and satisfaction with opticians remains high. 96% of patients reported they were satisfied with the optician who had carried out their eye test and 94% were satisfied with the overall experience. It was also positive to see that of those patients that did experience something going wrong, three-fifths had received an apology. Each year this number has increased and we look forward to seeing further improvement in this area.’