Jodie is a contact lens optician in the South West of England. Read on to find out more about her day.
Describe your typical day as a contact lens optician.
My typical day involves seeing a variety of contact lens fits, routine aftercares and emergency eye care appointments, meeting patients’ expectations and making sure they leave happy.
What do you start with every day?
First things first I start with a coffee! Then I start by looking at my clinic to see what my day is going to entail. Try and prepare my day to make it run as smoothly as possible as every patient can be so different.
What do you love about your job?
I love that no day is the same, every day in optics is so different. One day I can have a nice straightforward day with a full clinic of routine aftercares and then another day I can have a day full of new fits and emergency eye care appointments that can range from a contact lens being stuck in the eye to an emergency referral to the local hospital.
I have a huge interest in myopia management and I love to fit myopia control contact lenses – this is my favourite thing about my job, especially when fitting Eyedream as the patient wakes up and thinks it’s a miracle that they can see. I get great pleasure out of seeing the whole process through.
What are the challenges?
You can come across patients that have very high expectations of the vision that they will achieve with contact lenses and sometimes you can’t always achieve this, although we do our very best.
You can come across eye conditions that you may not have seen before but it makes it all the more interesting finding out what is going on.
We are very lucky at Noakes, Habermehl & Kerr that we have a great team and here and there is always someone on hand to assist if required.
What do you do to wrap up the day and prepare for the next one?
I end it very similar to how I start. I check the future clinics to see if I can do anything to prepare for them. If I have a new fit booked in I make sure lenses have been ordered if they are not in the trials banks.
Would you like to work in a clinical role, helping people to see better? Becoming a contact lens optician could be for you. If you want to become a contact lens optician, first you need to train as a dispensing optician. Click the links to find out more about each role, and why not do work experience in an optical practice to discover more about all the careers in eyecare.