Celebrating World Optometry Week: Eyes on the future of optometry in the UK

World Optometry Week is an opportunity to pause and reflect on the progress we’ve made in optometry. Today, we have around 18,000 optometrists delivering essential eye care service across the UK, in both primary and secondary care.  

We can also hold a mirror up to World Optometry Week’s key focus on global challenges as we look ahead here to the future in the UK too. There are challenges around the growing global population, ageing demographics, and opportunities for the transformational role optometry can play as a primary eye care provider within collaborative care models.  

While we have a highly developed eye care model in the UK, there are still significant challenges in the system. Ophthalmology is one of the largest contributors to national health services’ backlogs, and this is only set to increase with the UK’s ageing – and growing - population. 

There are over 700,000 patients waiting to begin ophthalmology treatment across the UK and a worryingly high number of patients are waiting over a year for ophthalmology appointments. Put simply, NHS ophthalmology services are overwhelmed and patients on long waiting lists are losing their sight unnecessarily. 

We fundamentally believe that optometry is in a unique position to address some of the UK’s most pressing challenges. Optometrists, as one of the four core pillars of primary care, are integral to reducing pressures on hospital eye services.  

Optometrists can and do play an essential role in this transformation across the UK nations. They have the necessary clinical skills to provide enhanced primary care services and should be the first port of call for anyone with eye health issues across the UK. Wales and Scotland are leading the way with expanded services delivered by primary eye care.  This helps reduce hospital waiting times for patients and ultimately helps reduce preventable sight loss. 

As identified in the World Report on Vision, we also require a large enough optometry workforce to deliver these services and meet the increasing demand for eye care. UK governments must all effectively support optometry training and workforce development to ensure optometrists can deliver a wide range of specialised services within primary care, as well as the continued delivery of essential sight tests and eye examinations.  

This year the College led the launch of the UK Eye Care Data Hub, a sector-wide collaboration to support health care commissioners in calculating the future eye care workforce over the next 10 years, spanning both primary and secondary eye care services. The open-access tool has been designed to support all health systems across the UK, to optimise the existing eye care workforce, address health inequalities, and identify priorities for future eye care workforce education, training and development to support new models of care. 

The College of Optometrists is committed to championing optometrists and leading the call for more optometry services to be commissioned in primary care at this critical time for eye care, both in the UK and globally. Optometrists’ expertise can make a difference to providing equitable, accessible, quality eye care for patients across the UK.