The Legal Responsibility of Optometrists to Detect eye Disease

Historical Significance: Medical opposition to optometry, particularly that of ophthalmology, often argued that optometrists were not competent in detecting eye disease and had no legal responsibility to do so. Neither of these propositions was correct and the Australian Optometrical Association put together this document to explain the true situation to politicians and others. The document was helpful to the Associations efforts to advance optometry on many occasions.The document includes reprints of relevant papers from optometric journals plus short papers written by David Southgate (1989) and John Nathan (1990)