Howard's blunt instrument

I would be interested to know how long it is since Howard Peters last visited a university optometry department (optician, Letters, February 20). His accusations that most graduates have little or no experience with modern instrumentation may have held true a few years ago but they are ill-informed today. Here at the University of Bradford all final-year students are required to use phoropter heads in some or all of their clinics. Most of the consulting rooms are equipped with a refraction unit with a slit-lamp and a keratometer and many of the rooms also have projector charts. Two rooms have electronic phoropter heads and most are equipped with a Volk lens and a headband binocular indirect ophthalmoscope which students are required to use at least five times during the final year. The students have access to (and are required to use) five different automated field screeners including a Humphrey and a Henson Pro. The use of Goldmann and Perkins applanation tonometers is encouraged but the students also use Reichert and Keeler Pulsair non-contact tonometers. They have access to gonioscope lenses, two video slit-lamps, a fundus camera and an Eyesys topographer, as well as numerous colour vision and binocular tests. At Bradford the money for new equipment and a new ground floor clinical facility has been found partly by increasing student numbers and partly by generous donations from the optical industry. I have no doubt that the department would have even more modern equipment if funding was unlimited, so if Mr Peters really is keen to promote continued investment in the training of his future employees and locums then he could help by making a donation to his local optometry department. Peter Charlesworth University of Bradford