Letters: March 23

I don’t understand why Robert Longhurst (Viewpoint, February 9) so dislikes the majority of patients perceiving him as a ‘sales representative’. I fear his use of the word patient goes to the root of the problem that pervades dispensing optics. Given that most DOs work on the high street, how can any DO consider the people coming in to buy spectacles or sunglasses are ‘patients’? I bet you that the vast majority don’t see themselves as such.

A good DO has to be both an excellent salesperson as well as an informed one. Does it matter one jot what label ‘patients’ confer on you, if they continue to come back because you are better than the unqualified sales assistant down the road?
And with the greatest respect, just because you have some knowledge of anatomy, pathology and pharmacology, it doesn’t necessarily follow that you are a competent DO. How much of the work actually requires knowledge of these subjects? Indeed, without selling skills a DO will get nowhere fast and I would not take on one with distinction in all subjects taught at college, if he was unable to sell an umbrella, manning an umbrella stand in the middle of a downpour!