Comment: All life is here - week after week

Understanding your surroundings is essential. How can you put into context what you do if you don't keep pace with what others around you are doing and charting the change in accepted norms?

Optician has always blazed a trail in optometric education. Optician introduced distance-learning CET, the mechanism by which most of the profession achieve their continuing education and training credits, long before it became compulsory. Optician has published its business Index for over 12 years and it remains the only consistent third-party appraisal of the market. And for the past decade Optician has had the privilege to chart the mixed fortunes of the laser refractive surgery business (see page 28) and the emergence of techniques such as clear lens extraction. Sadly this year will probably be the last laser survey.