Visus writes: Break down the barriers

Who is it that guards the guards? Whenever I engage with anyone in the NHS there is a random chance that I will meet an international health care professional. This may be a Philippino nurse, an Indian doctor or an Australian dentist. Rarely, however, have I come across a non-British trained optometrist. For some reason it has always been incredibly difficult to acquire British registration from overseas.

For decades this was because in our view of the world British optometry was the pinnacle of optometric scope of practice, however, this ceased over 30 years ago as the already diagnostic drug equipped US optometrists moved into therapeutics and latterly as first Australia, then New Zealand and finally Canada acquired such rights. We are now firmly fifth in the global pecking order.