ABDO should look at the high street --Letter

? I see from your editorial (Optician 27.05.11) that the Association of British Dispensing Opticians is looking for evidence on illegal and poor quality dispensing.

Sadly it needs look no further than many high street optical stores for examples of dispensing that would struggle to meet the basic legal requirements of satisfactory quality, let alone the high demands of ABDO.

I appreciate many staff 'dispensing' (legally) in practice are not qualified or registered with ABDO, but being so is certainly no guarantee of quality. I recently took my prescription to several optical stores where I was seen both by qualified dispensing opticians and 'dispensing assistants'. The level of knowledge by both was extraordinarily lacking.