Pre-reg year: Words of wisdom

Charlotte Wisdom, lead optometrist at Specsavers Ringwood, is currently supervising her third pre-registration optometrist – and enjoys it so much that she works between two stores to continue her mentoring role.

She qualified in 2013 and was offered a permanent position at Ringwood. But by spring 2015, her once supervisor Bruce Fitzgerald asked if she would like to be a secondary supervisor when a pre-reg started in the autumn, Wisdom was delighted to accept and mentored one or two days a week.

She says: ‘I knew exactly what was going on because I was only recently out of the process myself. But I did ask Bruce how much I should be checking on the trainee, as I didn’t want to go over the top. I had meetings with both the trainee and Bruce, and I also had meetings just with Bruce, to check that we were both on the same page.’