Contact Lens Practitioner of the Year

Contact Lens Practitioner of the Year is always one of the most fiercely contested categories at the Optician Awards but the winners themselves vary greatly. While some past winners have prioritised contact lenses from the inception of their careers, 2019’s category champion, Iain Johnson, has taken a more meandering path.

‘I took an incredibly long route to becoming a contact lens optician,’ says Johnson. ‘I started at 16 working part-time filing records in a busy practice. This led to working in the lab full-time for five years before taking the plunge and talking to patients as a dispensing assistant. Soon after I enrolled on the dispensing optician course and began taking on more roles and responsibilities. After doing that for many years I began training as a CLO and this is where I found my passion in optics.’