Bill Harvey: Sign of the times with trainee competence

As another phase of pre-registration optometrists begin their 12-month practice-based experience, it is, I have always found, useful to look at the competency areas that have proved a challenge to many over the year. It may not be the most scientific of methods, but I think they do, in some way, reflect more general trends in community optometry.

A perennial challenge is always the need to fit at least three and also undertake three aftercares of rigid gas permeable contact lens patients. The paucity of such patients in many a high street practice bears witness to how small a part of the UK market rigid lenses currently represents.