Chris Bennett: Ophthalmology gives its view of eyecare

When the statement; Eye healthcare is bad medicine, is the opening gambit of a personal viewpoint from a consultant ophthalmologist there’s a fair certainty that the argument is not going to pan out well for optometry.

Anyone reading Michael Clarke’s BMJ piece would not have been disappointed in this view. In a rallying cry to ophthalmologists to get up from their slit lamps he highlights the wastage, lack of regulation and scatter-gun approach to screening of patients attending for NHS sight tests. While his observation that UK law leads to opticians making too many referrals, might be helpful, his inference that optical businesspeople use equipment as little more than technical selling point and refer at will is not. GPs don’t get off scot free either.