Meet the Other Phone. Child-safe in minutes.

Meet the Other Phone.
Child-safe in minutes.

Buy now

Please or to access all these features

Work

Chat with other users about all things related to working life on our Work forum.

Anyone a Optometrist

2 replies

Maggiemoothecoo · 29/04/2020 21:12

Is anyone an optometrist? Would you recommend it? What career options are there other than commercial practices such as specsavers? Thanks

OP posts:
Smiling89 · 06/05/2020 18:22

Yep.

You have hospital optometrists - lots of patients but no pressure to sell glasses. Get to see a lot more interesting cases. The pay is a lot lower though. I would say most about £37k ish.

Multiple practices eg Boots Opticians, Specsavers, Vision Express, Optical Express etc. More pressure to sell, lots of patients (expect to miss your lunch) but pay a lot higher. Experienced optom can get as high as 70k in some areas - depends on where you live! Boots training for pre-registration very good.

Independent opticians - more time to test, still some sales pressure but definitely more relaxed than multiples. The only problem I've had with independents is that some can be poorly run and as the optometrist you end up with all the responsibility of sorting/instilling NHS/LOC rules/guidance in practice. Support staff can sometimes not be particularly well trained. Multiples sort everything for you, so you only have to test. Pay can still be good and level of organisation depends on the individual practice. So varies greatly.

You could alternatively locum so essentially self employed and work in a wide variety of places.

And there's domiciliary - generally good pay, company car and you see about 7 people a day instead of 19/20 +. You do have to travel a lot, lots of pressure to sell as less pxs (and they tend to overcharge pxs greatly - captive audience and all that). Easier to test with practice equipment instead of the portable equipment.

All have their benefits and disadvantages. Generally as an optom (at the moment) you can be guaranteed a job, good basic salary, easy to go part time, flexibility if a locum. No evening work - you can't take patient records home, so once your home you're done for the day. Having said all this Specsavers are trying to push through an apprentice optometrist position so instead of 3 yrs uni and pre reg, you do it all in practice over 7-8 years. All optoms are pretty much convinced this will lower the standard of optometrists and drive our wages down too. The level of supervision of a trainee cannot be achieved in a busy practice setting, but no doubt Specsavers will push it through to further undervalue our profession. They tend to see us purely as refracting machines to sell glasses, instead of health professionals who pick up things such as ICP, tumours, BP, diabetes, GCA, MS, strokes etc.....

Smiling89 · 06/05/2020 18:31

Sorry forgot to add...

Best perks of the job:
I could probably move anywhere and there'll be a job available somewhere.
Good pay
You leave work at work.
Satisfaction of helping people with health problems.
Easy to go part time and still have a decent wage approx 30k if working in multiple/independent sector.
Always something new to learn (further qualifications)

Worst bits:
It can be a bit repetitive, you repeat the same words everyday "better with 1 or 2? (Great if you feel unwell though, you can almost just zombie through the day you have it memorised)
People will overbook your clinic and don't seem to understand you legally have to complete a certain amount in a test - you can't just cut it out without adversely affecting the patient so you tend to run behind lots. Patients will blame you for this and think you're lazy instead of overworked.

New posts on this thread. Refresh page
Swipe left for the next trending thread