“Successful advocacy is not a zero-sum game”

My job now is to articulate on behalf of a key group of healthcare professionals: optometrists – and, to a lesser but no less important degree – the small but increasing number of dispensing opticians who make up the AOP’s membership. That is what I am employed to do and that is what I am good at.

However, what is unusual is that I have never myself been within one of the groups that I have been championing. Whatever my personal frailties, I have not myself been homeless, in prison or a substance abuser; nor have I been a lawyer or, as is painfully evident from these ramblings, an optometrist. In some eyes, that makes me a less effective advocate: when I was appointed to my first CEO role, it was over the objections of a trustee who was determined that only a former addict was qualified (he was only mollified when I agreed to spend my first two weeks in post in a residential rehab – not an induction process I would recommend).

Politicians are far more likely to be influenced by heart-rending anecdote and swingeing generalisation than pages of carefully argued logic supported by reams of statistics

In truth, though, optometry being represented by someone from outside the profession is helpful. Optometrists, like all professional groups, are so accustomed to their own language and norms that they can fail to recognise how these may be received by others.

I am not just talking about the technical detail of eye disease or acronyms like GOS, which those outside the profession do not understand. But there are behaviours that are essential in the practice of optometry – attention to detail, numerical rigour, dispassionate logic – which do not work the same way in the outside world. Politicians are far more likely to be influenced by heart-rending anecdote and swingeing generalisation than pages of carefully argued logic supported by reams of statistics.

More than that, successful advocacy is not a zero-sum game. A win for optometry should never be – and never be represented as – a loss for wider society. When we are advocating for more clinical work to be done in primary care, we should not be talking about primary care winning and hospitals losing, but what is better for patients and, in these days of tight public spending, the taxpayer. That is why the soon-to-be-published economic modelling we have commissioned from PA Consulting is so helpful, showing as it does that the same clinical work done in primary care costs far less than that done in secondary.

When we are advocating for more clinical work to be done in primary care, we should not be talking about primary care winning and hospitals losing, but what is better for patients and, in these days of tight public spending, the taxpayer

There will be times, of course, when our advocacy on behalf of optometry comes into conflict with the views of others. Take our vision and driving campaign, for example, which has received so much media coverage. For us, the case for requiring those with potential sight issues (usually, the elderly) to be required to produce evidence from an optometrist that they are safe to drive is evidence-based and entirely logical. For those advocating on behalf of the elderly, we are potentially robbing some old people of their mobility and freedom. Some groups have argued by requiring only those above a certain age to produce such evidence, any measures in this area are ageist.

That is where it is important not to get stuck in your sector trench and where it is sometimes helpful to have a perspective from outside the profession. I have worked alongside Age UK for many years and know how these moves are perceived by advocates for the elderly. Rather than going into battle with them, we need to see how we can reframe the argument and make common cause. Of course, groups like Age UK are not arguing for the right of elderly people who cannot see properly to be let loose on our roads. What they are looking for are policies which do not overtly and unnecessarily discriminate against elderly people. And more than that, they are looking for solutions to the very real problem of isolated elderly people being unable to escape from their houses once they are unable to drive.

Whatever our professional or personal background, we all have a potential interest in that problem being solved. I have never actually been employed to advocate on behalf of the elderly. But I guess I ought to accept the reality that that may be one group in society which I may one day be qualified to represent.