Letters: Optometry apprenticeships: Clinical deskilling?

To be a good optometrist you need dedication – with completion of the university degree that gives you the basis of the anatomy and physiology of the eye and the body as a whole. I feel that the proposed apprenticeship is going to dilute the whole degree and devalue our profession. We have taken a battering from the public, the medical profession and the ophthalmology community over the years and it is only now that there is confidence and need for good community-based optometrists to provide a good eye care system.

The universities are producing more optometrists than when I first entered the profession and what we do not want is a profession that has so called optometrists through the back door not practicing to the standard that we have all aspired to.