Letters to the editor

Plea for NBEO

When will the madness end?

Why in the world would anyone feel the need to get re-certified with the NBEO (“NBEO unveils board certification process,” January 2014)? Wasn't one gut-wrenching experience with this organization enough for one career?

I need 24 hours of CE per year to keep my Kansas license. Many of these classes are provided at no charge by the top retina, glaucoma, and cornea specialists in Kansas City. I feel my education is certainly being wonderfully enhanced by attendance at these meetings.

Why go back and once again study all the ocular trivia that we all once had to cram into our heads in order to take the first step in obtaining a state license? Is the current CE we obtain every year somehow viewed as inadequate by the self-perceived gods at the NBEO?

Heavens, this group made each of our lives a living hell for the last 3 years of optometry school. Please, please leave us alone and go away. Pursue some other means of making a living.

We do not need nor do we want to have anything to do with the NBEO and its silly recertification scheme ever again.

Timothy J. Smith, OD

Liberty, MO

ASCRS and OD education

Dr. Stephen Lane's comments concerning ASCRS opening its meeting to all ODs was the most classic example of “double-speak” I've ever read (“Second IOMED program at ASCRS meeting,” March 2014). Optometry has complained about the ASCRS policy of barring ODs for many, many years. Our concerns could not be clearer. The numbers of ODs will not increase to “show interest” (“Vote with their feet”) when ASCRS will not allow the overwhelming majority of ODs to attend. To base its decision on whether to open the meeting on the number of OD in attendance or the increase in OD attendance is ludicrous. How can the numbers increase when ASCRS will not let us in?

This is all a smoke-screen for the real reason ASCRS members don't want ODs at their meeting. ASCRS is a political organization that believes educating optometrists will allow optometrists to lobby legislators for increased clinical scope of practice...something that has never happened and is equally laughable to think political optometry would use convention education at the hands of an ophthalmologist as validation for expanded optometric scope.

Unbelievable !

Randall N. Reichle, OD, FAAO

Houston, TX

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