Practitioners who fail to gain the statutory 36 CET points by the end of this year will have a grace period to catch up or be struck off, it has been confirmed.
Practitioners who fail to gain the statutory 36 CET points by the end of this year will have a grace period to catch up or be struck off, it has been confirmed.Speaking at a FODO education seminar last week, Tim Ray, managing director of Vantage, the company entrusted to manage optics' CET scheme, told delegates that practitioners would have a 'grace period' of 10 weeks before being removed from the Opticians Register.
In his presentation, Ray explained what will happen at the end of 2006, when the CET cycle restarts.
Vantage will refer any practitioners who have failed to accrue enough CET points on to the GOC by January 14 2007.
Individual letters will go out to each practitioner to warn them they have until March 15 2007 to make up the shortfall or face removal from professional practice.
He said that the GOC would consider further, after the DoH has commented, what changes might be made to the GOC's CET Rules 2005, once the current CET cycle comes to an end on December 31 2006.
He said there were 13,565 CET users in the profession - 9,129 optometrists, 3,411 dispensing opticians and 1,025 contact lens dispensing opticians - with 2,088 unregistered.
Other presentations included a section on 'workforce', a theme which can signal a shortfall, or oversupply, of professionals in a sector.
GOC chief executive Peter Coe presented the Council's own model for optometry, and there was a presentation on the pharmacy model which was funded by the DoH and produced by Professor David Guest, Dr Pat Oakley and Dr Sarah Battersby at Kings College, London.
FODO vice-chairman Paul Carroll, chairman of the Education and Professional Standards Committee said: 'The open meeting was an extremely valuable way of discussing such important issues with the whole sector.'