View from the FMO: What really matters to people working in optics?

What really matters to people working in optics? The answer to this depends on who you ask, but there is one theme that recurs and that is about being taken seriously as a sector. Although ‘we’ all know that community optics provides a high quality, excellent value and accessible clinical service, the cross subsidy (which ensures the value to policy makers) colours perceptions about the sector at every level and has done for decades.

It is generally seen as good news that the challenges in secondary care are leading to increasing roll-out of NHS-funded programmes such as Mecs in high street practices. This brings a real opportunity to shift the emphasis away from the cost of frames and lenses to the skills of optometrists and dispensing opticians and the investment in innovation in the optical practice. All optical practitioners play a role in preventing avoidable blindness and can play a much greater role in saving money by keeping patients with minor eye conditions out of hospitals.