Look further than CET

Optician has always been a big supporter of education but it was inevitable that Continuing Education and Training would have its downsides.

Initially it was bureaucracy, technology and confusion that blotted CET’s copybook but a new casualty is emerging.
As the profession approaches the end of the first three-year cycle it appears that meetings in general may be experiencing what advertising people call the dead cat bounce.

This is the phenomenon where a period of fantastic interest and activity is followed by nothing. A dropped dead cat doesn’t bounce, it just lands flat.

In times of voluntary CET many professionals took part in a massive amount of training. No one was counting points, as it were, so those eager to learn continued to build up their total and hungered for knowledge.

Compulsion in CET was followed by a rush of activity in which people amassed their required total, but having reached that total it appears that some have now stopped going to meetings full stop. Meetings held in the last part of this year are done so at the organisers’ peril.

But the benefits to business people and clinicians alike cannot be measured in CET credits alone. Last week Nick Atkins, one of the founders of the Independents Day conference, urged our readers to look further than CET when considering which meetings to attend.

Although Independents Day 06 has secured six CET points, it is essentially a business conference that shares and promulgates good ideas to the independent community. It would be a tragedy if anyone failed to attend simply because they had reached their total of CET and thought they would wait until the new year before starting to gain points towards their next target.

Conferences such as Independents Day are invaluable to the independent community.  CET points may be valuable but one decent business idea knocks a half dozen CET points into a cocked hat.