Members to vote on ABDO name change

A proposal from a member of the Association of British Dispensing Opticians (ABDO) to change its name to the Association of British Registered Opticians (News 11.09.09) will be debated at ABDO's annual general meeting on October 3.

A vote will be taken on the issue at the AGM, in which all full ABDO members within the UK are entitled to participate, with proxy voting also available to members unable to attend.

The proposal was made to ABDO by dispensing optician Richard Harsant. 'We have unqualified dispensing assistants taking over a lot of our work, in turn we need to move forward and expand our horizons,' he explained. 'Ophthalmic opticians now call themselves optometrists because they saw this as a way of expanding their practice. Outside of optics you find very few people calling themselves dispensing chemists, they call themselves pharmacists for the same reasons. Dispensing opticians don't just dispense, there is an element of prescribing to what they do, this is part of moving forwards.'