Moneo

It has been interesting watching recent activity surrounding the Health and Social Care Bill. We all know that our professional bodies have welcomed this bill on our behalf. There seems to be a lot of talk surrounding how we can protect our current services but there is little, if any, talk about how we can actually move forward into new areas of activity. If this profession is to truly survive in a new health and social care environment it has to change and become more part of the full breadth of activities this involves.

There has been a total absence of discussion around how our profession is currently placed. I have said it before and I will repeat it again now. Optics in this country is retail based with a clinical rump that I strongly suspect many consider as a necessary adjunct in order to produce spectacle and contact lens specifications to fuel the retail activity. I know that there will be many who dispute this but, interestingly, many of those are actually the bastions of high quality clinical practice who feel they are offended by such definitions. There are others who remain steadfastly silent on the matter. I suspect for good reason. It is well past time we tackled the elephant in the room. For optometry to move forward we have to stop putting our desires and wants first and put our patients in the centre. And yes before I go any further they are patients. They are not customers, or consumers, or punters. They are patients. They are seeking our clinical expertise and our abilities to diagnose problems. It is only after that when they may seek to purchase retail items that they may be considered as customers. Patients must be at the centre of our clinical thinking. There have recently been examples of advertising, some of it highly misleading, which is designed to put backsides on seats, not for good clinical reasoning, but to entice people in to premises with a view to increasing retail sales. We all know this is true but no one is prepared to say it. Well the time to say it is now. Patients should drive our clinical agenda. I would expect to see LOCs bringing patients to their meetings in order to seek their views.