Is your child thinking about their future career? Q&A with Specsavers and expert optometrist

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THIS Q&A IS NOW CLOSED. VIEW LUCY AND HUSSNAN'S ANSWERS HERE.

Is your child thinking about what to do next? If they are interested in STEM subjects or healthcare, have they considered optometry? Specsavers is offering 40 students the chance to receive a £10,000 scholarship to study optometry at university. To help with this difficult life decision we’ve invited two Specsavers’ experts to answer your questions on a career in optometry, and the university scholarship.

• Post your questions on the thread below.
• Everyone who shares a questions on the thread below by 21/10 will be entered into a prize draw to win a £200 voucher
• Our expert will be back in a few weeks to answer some of your questions

Hussnan Ejaz
Hussnan is an Ophthalmic Director at Specsavers. He joined the company in 2009 on a work experience placement before becoming an Optical Assistant, then qualifying as an Optometrist in 2015. He is now a director in the same Dudley practice, as well as a director of the Blackheath practice and Dudley hear care. Hussnan currently runs a team of 12 optometrists and regularly supervises trainee clinicians. He completed his professional certificate in Medical Retina and Glaucoma in 2022, is a WOPEC assessor and acts as a facilitator for the Specsavers pre reg academy. Hussnan is an enthusiastic advocate for promoting Optometry and continually developing himself and optometrist colleagues professionally.

Lucy Knock
Lucy is the Early Talent Lead for Specsavers. Her role involves raising the profile of optometry amongst young people, teachers and parents, and encouraging grass roots optometry development in local communities. She works with schools, universities, Education Business Partnerships and optometry leaders to engage young people and showcase the amazing breadth of opportunity a career in optometry can offer. Lucy’s background is teaching and youth engagement, developing programmes for hard-to-reach audiences in a range of settings. She graduated in 2001 with a first class honours degree from the University of Leicester, studied secondary history education gaining a PGCE (2003) and a Masters in 2005.

Here’s what Specsavers has to say:
"We understand the careers landscape can often be a noisy and overwhelming place for teenagers and their parents and carers. We wanted to share the exciting opportunities a clinical career with Specsavers offers, but since Optometry is an often-overlooked path, we knew we had to do something new and bold! The Bright Stars Scholarship is an industry leading programme and encourages people to consider optometry when choosing their next steps."

Thanks and good luck!
MNHQ

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Spot on, I absolutely love being an optometrist but it's so much more stressful now and salaries are dwindling

I would agree. I work in an amazing practice for lovely people, but I don’t think that’s the norm.
I do like the flexibility of the job but I don’t think all employers would be as flexible as mine. A huge majority of practices (including the ones that appear to be ‘independent’) are parts of larger groups with the commercial pressures that come with that. Running a practice just isn’t viable without selling enough glasses (especially in places with NHS contracts) so the job is definitely not just healthcare, sales and business come into it too.
I also agree about progression, it’s extremely limited, which is fine as long as you’re prepared for that. It can be rewarding especially once you get established and have regular patients, but this won’t happen everywhere. I don’t regret going into optometry but on balance I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone starting out.

Thankyou it's great to hear from people doing the job. What would you have done instead do you think /what would you recommend?

What sort of pay could someone get to without getting into sales/buying a practice?

Oh and did you know going into it it was about sales. Do they make that clear when you sign up for the course? My daughter was sure it would be a super science course.

What are the pros and cons of optometry compared to other healthcare degree choices?

What type of jobs or further study do people go to after an optometry degree or qualification? Is it all optician type roles? Just wondering if a more general stem or healthcare qualification would be more useful for an undecided young person?

Optometry is a vocational degree, typically if you study optometry you do it to become an optometrist.
Some people get to the end and decide optometry isnt for them and at that point I guess you’d be able to apply for graduate jobs in the same way that other graduates do.
If you have a child who is undecided I’d recommend something more general. I don’t think other healthcare degrees would fit either as typically if you study physio/podiatry/prosthetics/orthotics/Orthoptics/radiography etc these are similar to optometry in that’s they qualify you for a job/career- albeit mainly NHS based not sales based as in optometry.

If you avoid sales then you’re looking at hospital optometry or academia
In hospital optometry band 6 is entry level, typical jobs are band 7 and clinically highly specialised will attract 8a. Management positions start at 8a up to 8c
Academia has similar points system for pay so you’re probably in a similar ball park.
In the high street you’ll be lucky to find something that’s not about sales.
And there is usually some module on business etc but sales isn’t really discussed. And certainly not the sales pressure that some optoms can be placed under.
Difficult to know what to advise as an alternative as I’m sure if I said engineering lots of engineers would say ‘don’t’, but genuinely I’d never advise a young person to do optometry. And have taken this stance from very early in my career where I actually felt a bit duped until I found my niche.

Yes that's what I was wondering about being duped.

Its a higher paying career in hospital than going in as a nurse or OT or radiographer or physio though then as that's a band or two higher.

The course is a great science course, LOTS of physics/optics stuff which I really enjoyed. Also anatomy etc. No they don’t really touch on commercial pressures during the course (or they didn’t in mine) as I think that would increase the dropout rate (there was a high dropout rate on my course though I’m not sure why, the teaching was very good)

Personally I wouldn’t consider my job to be ‘STEM’ at all, I feel like it’s just a trendy buzzword which implies the potential for innovative or well-paid careers.

it needs to be because otherwise they’d never attract any optometrists into the nhs. But there’s a ceiling in hospital optometry that’s definitely lower than high street for obvious reasons.

@Alocasia agree, course is really interesting and is likely to become
more clinical in the coming years as optometry schools adopt the masters qualification which diverts even more from what the actual role is once you plop off the end of the production line into specsavers/VE/boots/hakim group.

Hmm my duaghter would be attracted by the science course but we were out off by the sales aspect.

Those saying low pay - if its higher band in hospital than other health courses like radiography (her other "sounds sciencey" course currently) then it could still be in her running as it was the lack oay/progression, that was putting her off.

She's interested in radiology and psychiatry too but doesn't want to do all the years of a med degree to get there!

Hospital posts are less readily available and often part time/sessional. A lot of extended roles in eye departments are taken on by orthoptists because they’re easier to recruit (there’s not an huge private market) and relatively cheaper. Hospital optometry used to be very poorly paid in comparison to high street but it’s evened out a little, it depends where you are geographically. A lot of optoms mix and match to give variety to their week.

Thankyou so much for all your answers @Gnarab24 it's so helpful to hear from people epl who actually know rather than just what the online careers guidance says. I think ironically this thread might be making her reconsider!

@Bedbugdilemma happy to help, feel free to DM if you need anymore info

Thanks, that's really useful

I would need to know more about the ts and cs of the bursery, would this need to be paid back if they did not stay with specsavers for a specific period ? What are the entrance criteria, can they retake a year if the results were not as they were predicted ? Lots to consider

My daughter is only 7, but funnily enough is interested in being an optician and was gleeful when at her last eye test she was told she eeded glasses for reading!

She was briefly interested in dentistry then she thought about having to poke around people's stinky mouths 🤣

I studied a STEM subject and am actively keen on my daughter selecting a course of study that may result in a stead and reliable income, unlike say, lollipop lady, unicorn or ballerina which have been fleeting ideas in the past!

I'd be interested to know if there are alternative routes to study other than a traditional university course, and whether it is still as difficult to get a university place to study optometry as it was 25 ish years ago when my friends and I were making our university choices.

My children are still young but some insight into entry requirements, length of training, graduate salary and career pathways would be helpful?

Yes, I did the first year of the degree many years ago. Hated it.

It sounds like Husnan progressed through the company which is good to see, but my question is everytime I have gone to Specsavers for a test, it does seem like a conveyer type process, with time contraints. Do you feel Specsavers should treat clients like people and not like a cost centre. I would like to think a career in Opthelmy would be a good one - but what are thoughts on the customer experience ? Do you have to meet targets in terms of time and dispensing as well as carrying out a robust eye test.

Friend of my son studied optometry, was very business orientated and is now absolutely loaded and runs several spec savers franchises. If you are business orientated and good at stem seems like a brilliant career: if you are not into business it’s probably a nightmare career.

Same with pharmacy - know a lot of pharmacists who set up on their own and then opened several shops and bought out by the big guys. Retired early absolutely loaded - but you have to have the business mind as well as the sciences bit

My question would be which university would you recommend to study this qualification in terms of facilities for students, on site amenities and good student accommodation ?