Comment: What are your views on CET?

Everyone has their own gripe about continuing education and training and very shortly you will have your chance to air your views. From next month the GOC will be conducting its own consultation on CET (see news) with an emphasis on how points are collected.

The optical jungle drums suggest there is discontentment over the fall-off in attendance at CET events and a cap could be imposed on distance learning of the type provided by the likes of Optician and Replay Learning. But Optician doubts that forcing practitioners to attend meetings will have the desired effect. The bigger issue is the change in attitude that accompanied compulsion. In the pre-compulsion world CET was surrounded by an atmosphere of personal betterment, patient care and warm glows from 'doing the right thing'. Somehow, and there is no blame, the CET scene has a much harder edge. The talk is often of targets and points collection.