Optometrist Christian Dutton is calling on practitioners to take part in an online survey to discover their views about the length of eye examinations, which he will be presenting to the Federation of Ophthalmic and Dispensing Opticians (FODO) this July.
Dutton, who has practised as an optometrist for 10 years, is conducting the survey to find out how many practitioners share his belief that the industry standard 20 minute-long eye exam risks compromising standards of clinical care in favour of commercial gain.
'Twenty-minute eye examinations are considered to be the industry norm but in my experience many clinicians do not feel this is a sufficient amount of time to conduct an eye examination to an acceptable standard,' he told Optician.
Dutton also questioned whether a correlation existed between the length of eye exams and convictions by the General Optical Council, commenting that the GOC Fitness to Practise committee would be unlikely to accept a defence of excessive workload even if employers have imposed demanding targets.
'I'd love to hear from as many people as possible before I present to FODO's Council in early July. I'm very much hoping the profession will revisit the way we work,' he added.
Testing Times (www.testingtimes.co.uk) comprises seven questions such as asking how long practitioners allocate for each eye exam, how long they think the test should be and how many eye tests they believe they can safely perform to the College guidance in a typical day.
The results of the Testing Times survey will be published on June 30.