Everyone is Different

One of the joys of being an optometrist is getting to meet people face to face. Perhaps I am now “old school” but I prefer continuity of care and actually speaking directly to someone who is familiar with my history and has helped manage any healthcare requirements I might have. I try, as a practicing optometrist, to offer my patients the same level of care. One of the difficulties of operating in the NHS environment is the limited time available to each patient. It is good to talk but it is not always possible spend the required time with a patient at the first consultation. Occasionally it is possible to deal with a patient in only a few minutes. More typically, as the population ages, healthcare needs increase and consultation time needed increases. The same is true of vision problems. We all have elderly relatives who have increasing health and vision problems. When I started in practice my role was simply to test eyes for glasses. If someone could not see well I was obliged to send the patient to their GP who had the final say if a patient would benefit from referral to an ophthalmologist. How things have changed. Today, as an optometrist, my role is assessing the entire vision system. Not just what we see, but how we see it and why we see what we do. Optometrists now advise GP’s on eye health matters and GP’s refer patients to us for our opinion. Every morning when I step into my practice the only certainty is today will be different from yesterday. Different patients with different vision problems and vision needs and, invariably, someone with a challenging eye health problem which will require much more time and more resources than the NHS are prepared to fund.