BLACK DAY FOR QUEENSLAND HEALTH

State Cabinet meets today to determine the fate of Queensland’s 700 optometrists.

Cabinet granted the optometrists the right to use and prescribe eye drops when it changed regulations on 24 March 2005.

However, under the threat of a walkout by 22 public hospital ophthalmologists (eye doctors) the Premier said that he would further amend the Regulation to dump the dedicated Optometrists Board and give responsibility for administering eye drops to a group of doctors, including striking ophthalmologists. He called it the “NSW model.”

The similar group in NSW has ensured that not a single eye drop has been made available to patients, despite three years of meetings.

Optometrists Association President Simon Hurwood said, “The Premier is now conveniently disguising his decision as “safe patient care” rather than industrial blackmail. What a ridiculous proposition to suggest that optometrists could breach safe patient care when ophthalmologists have demonstrated their lack of dedication to safe patient care by threatening to quit patients altogether.

“These eye drops have been used by Victorian and Tasmanian optometrists for more than six years and in the United States for a generation without incident. I challenge the Premier to show me one example of a breach of safe patient care.

“What infuriates me most is the fact that the Premier has been bragging about retraining optometrists to take over some of the simple tasks that ophthalmologists don’t have time for.

“The fact is that 80 of our members have personally forked out half a million dollars to do the world class Graduate Certificate in Ocular Therapeutics course at QUT and now have little prospect of using their new skills. This cowardly decision is an insult to QUT and my members.”

Monday, 27 June 2005

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