Ethical scenarios
Our ethical scenarios show how our Guidance for Professional Practice can be applied in practice and help you think about some of the wider issues involved in the practice of optometry.
Each of our growing collection of tailor-made scenarios comes with multiple choice questions and a full explanation of the answers. College members can access a comprehensive commentary written by our clinical advisers.
Latest ethical scenarios
Test your decision-making skills
Guidance for Professional Practice
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Knowledge, skills and performance
3. Spectacle supply to old prescription
6. Seeing patient who takes his prescription elsewhere
8. Non tolerance to outside prescription
10. Recall frequency for patient with glaucoma
11. Spectacle supply to overseas prescription
13. Prescribing for patient with cataract and myopic shift
15. Prescribing monovision specs
16. Patient does not attend dilation appointment
21. Giving contact lens specification to prisoner's mother
29. Re-examination interval of a diabetic patient.
34. Compulsory enhanced diagnostic tests
Safety and quality
13. Prescribing for patient with cataract and myopic shift
14. Parent fails to bring child in for cycloplegic refraction
16. Patient does not attend dilation appointment
30. A data protection conundrum
32. Acting openly and honestly when mistakes are made
36. A case of mistaken identity
Communication, partnership and teamwork
9. Contact lens checkup for patient wearing lenses bought online
12. Examination of someone with a red eye
18. Re-examination after referral
19. Communication with patients
20. Re-examination of patients seen by hospital eye service
21. Giving contact lens specification to prisoner's mother
23. Visual display unit add for outside prescription
25. Working with the patient to minimise their risk of harm
28. Dispensing an external prescription
33. Telling the patient: a matter of understanding
34. Compulsory enhanced diagnostic tests
37. Professional boundaries and social media
40. Consent and the right to refuse treatment
Also in this section
- Guidance for Professional Practice
- COVID-19: Updates, guidance, information and resources
- Clinical Management Guidelines
- Clinical advisers
- Optometrists' Formulary
- In-practice guidance and forms
- Governance and regulation
- Guidance for therapeutics
- Using Evidence in Practice
- Clinical files
- Clinical notes
- Ethical scenarios