Specialist practitioners starved of CET points

The General Optical Council's running of the CET scheme has been criticised this week.

It has emerged that the handful of optometrists on the specialist registers for additional supply and supplementary prescribing have been told they have to earn a requisite number of points by December 31, despite not enough points being available.

Andrew Matheson of Matheson Optometrists in New Alresford, Hants, qualified to be on the therapeutics speciality register in March. The next month he received a letter from the GOC outlining his requirement to earn eight specialist therapeutic points by December 31.

Since then he has failed to get any response from the GOC or Vantage, the company that administers the continuing education scheme, regarding where he should obtain such points when no providers offer them.