November 2023 Newsletter

AGM & Board Meeting | Discipline Hearing | Minister Statement
 

COBC AGM & Board Meeting

Our Annual General Meeting will be held via Zoom on Thursday, November 23 at 9:00 AM. The COBC Board will meet immediately after, at 10:15 AM. Both meetings are open to all registrants and members of the public who wish to attend. 

Pre-registration is required using the link below. Access details will be provided by email to those who register.

We hope to see you online!

View the announcement and register
 

Discipline hearing

COBC has scheduled a discipline hearing for former registrant Sohrab Mohammadi. The hearing will run December 4–8 and 11–15, 2023 (rescheduled from March of 2022).
 

Read the citation


Public notices regarding opticians' conduct can be found on the COBC website. These notices include Discipline Committee outcomes, some Inquiry Committee outcomes, and notices about upcoming discipline hearings. We also highlight upcoming hearings in our newsletter, as these proceedings are open to the public. Please contact us if you wish to attend.
 

CCP cycle ending soon

If you are currently in the third and final year of your continuing education cycle, you must fulfill all the requirements of your Continuing Competency Program (CCP) no later than December 31, 2023.

The program is self-managed, so you are responsible for ensuring that all the steps have been completed in the online system.

This includes: taking the assessment(s), creating goals for yourself, finding and completing activities to achieve those goals, and reflecting on how it went.

Please log in to your profile on the COBC website to log your progress. If you have questions about CCP, you can visit our website to access guides and tools or contact Christopher Dodge, our Manager of Quality Assurance.

Unsure when your cycle ends?

Log in to your COBC account and navigate to the HOME tab to see your cycle end date, along with other important dates related to your registration.

(If you can't see any dates in your HOME tab, it may be that you need to complete your log-in security questions!)
 
COBC's 2022-2023 Annual Report

Statement on Allied Health Professionals Day

October 14 was Allied Health Professionals Day. In recognition, the BC Minister of Health, Adrian Dix, released a statement:

"On Allied Health Professionals Day, we celebrate the unique contributions of our allied health workforce. These dedicated individuals play a critical role in ensuring people in BC have access to comprehensive, reliable and quality care to support their health and well-being, and are trusted members of health-care teams across the province."

Read the full statement
 

What's going on at COBC

Here's what we're currently working on:

  • Inclusion & diversity training
    This month, our staff team is participating in a workshop on inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.
     
  • Renewal preparations
    Although the annual renewal period is still several months away, the COBC team begins updating our database and developing our renewal tools in the fall. 
  • Committee meetings
    It's another busy month for COBC committees. Our Inquiry, Quality Assurance, and Registration Committees all have meetings on the calendar, as does our Governance Working Group. Learn more about our committees here.
     
  • Amalgamation workstreams
    Staff from the amalgamating regulatory colleges, including COBC, have begun the next phase of our amalgamation preparations—working in specialized teams on a variety of projects that will ensure our new college is ready to take over our collective operations on June 28, 2024.
     
  • Processing CCP
    About one-third of COBC registrants are due to complete their Continuing Competency Program by December 31, 2023. As this date approaches, we see more registrants wrapping up their final goals. Our team will begin processing registrants' completed programs this month.
 

Did you know?

When you complete a contact lens fitting, you must provide your client with a copy of their contact lens record, free of charge, whether they request it or not.

A contact lens record is a record of contact lens specifications derived from a contact lens fitting using information contained in an authorizing document and prepared by a contact lens fitter.

This requirement is specified in Opticians Regulation Section 6(7) and COBC Standard of Practice 8.

College of Opticians of BC operates on the traditional, ancestral and unceded Coast Salish territories of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), səl̓ílwətaʔɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations.

Unsubscribing from this email will revoke your consent to receive email correspondence from us as outlined in Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation (CASL) . We will no longer be able to send you important reminders pertaining to your license, which may affect your registration with the College of Opticians of BC. Please contact us if you have any questions.