Letters: Clinical education could be found wanting

Our practice heavily invests in equipment, such as angiography OCTs, ERGs and intense light pulse therapy for dry eyes. This sort of equipment requires in depth knowledge, which I gained from university, specifically visual neurology and visual psychophysics.

Without lectures and complex notes on these topics, I wouldn’t be able to even try to use these machines, specifically the ERG, which are going to be used more in the next few years with the inclusion in NICE guidelines for PXs using hydroxychloroquine.

Optometrists in the coming years will be using this equipment and having to interpret the signal the ERG produces. Can anyone at the big multiples begin to explain to me and my colleagues how they envisage ERG lectures for apprentices? In addition, OCT analysis by a lot of current optometrists is poor, due to not being comprehensively taught at university. For most of the equipment and analysis optometrists will be using and needing in the coming years will require a fully medically focused optometry degree.