Joe Ayling: Don’t let patients run scared of unknown

‘Are you a trained optician?’ is a question I am often asked at gatherings, after the more customary ‘what do you do?’.

My defensive instinct is to explain how, as a trained journalist, the skill of writing for Optician is to be a messenger for the many expert voices involved in the profession.

Furthermore, this month marks a fifth year delivering these messages, all the time gathering new insights that help build the credentials of an armchair expert.

At a visit to the Midlands for this week’s Looking at Labs feature I could only marvel at the art of producing a pair of spectacles across a bewildering range of rimless designs. When visiting practices, the expertise of fitting individual frames and contact lenses and the detection of eye disease using latest technology never ceases to amaze.