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.
It is time that the multiples who want cheap labour and just want to sell spectacles have a rethink on what harm they are doing to this wonderful profession that I have had the privilege to serve for the past 30 years. I am still learning, and I want our young professionals to also have the same drive and ambition through a well-structured university degree rather than a half measure apprenticeship.
Look at what they have done to diabetic screening which should have been the job of the optometrist to undertake with their routine eye examination, rather than a room hired by a technician to take images and then being viewed remotely? This does not inspire confidence in patients and makes them think they are having a thorough assessment by the so-called technicians.
Kirit Patel, Radlett