Optician Awards 2018: Optometrist of the Year

For Michael O’Kane, winner of Optician’s Optometrist of the Year Award for 2018, being a good optometrist not only means being good at providing the clinical side of care – investigating, diagnosing and treating conditions – but also knowing how to counsel patients and ‘when the right time to refer is’.

He was encouraged by friends and colleagues to enter the award, which he did not expect to win due to ‘the quality of the other contenders’, because of all the effort he has put into his work since opening his Specsavers practice in 2009. A major strength of his approach, he says, is his ability to read people and situations, adjusting his conversations to suit the patient he finds himself with.