Last week my scheduler and I saw an elderly lady who started crying after the eye test. Her one sentence, said through tears, stuck with me. She said, ‘Today you have given me my dignity back’. Hearing this made me feel so good.
The appointment was the one thing that she could do independently on her own. She did not have to ask her busy daughter to take her to the optician. She just picked up the leaflet posted through her door, made the appointment by phone, and did not have to rely on anyone else.
The entire journey was so easy for her, that she felt like she did it on her own, whereas every other thing that she tried to do had to be done by someone else; from cutting her toenails to sorting her hair out, to getting her shoes on.
To be able to give someone their independence and their dignity back is life changing.
If you are bored with the routine of a test room every day, and want to be the best clinician you can be, it’s worth thinking about getting out of a store and into people’s homes – and their hearts.
Many people ask me why I got into domiciliary and what it’s like working in people’s homes every day. So I just tell them about my customers. The jovial disabled 50-year-old who makes us laugh even though she cannot leave her room; the 106-year-old knitting for her 76-year-old toyboy boyfriend who always splashes out on new glasses because she has no one else, and the lady who we see every year who wells up with happiness when she gives us a Christmas card.
Previously, I’d been in store from age 16 as an optical assistant and worked my way up. I qualified as an optometrist, and really loved it. I was passionate about what I did. But after a while, I reached a point where it all just became too routine.
Five years after qualifying, I felt I was on a treadmill. Things just didn’t feel right any more. My job had become far too easy. The clinical advancement of phoropters, fundus cameras and autorefractors was great, but I found easy meant boring. I wasn’t trained just to sit behind a tiny little table in a tiny little booth with a black box behind me. And at that time there weren’t the opportunities that there are today to extend your skills and experience, and to do more for your patients, with enhanced optical services.
Around the same time, my aunt was bedbound at only 42 years old, sadly dying of stomach cancer. She was just becoming presbyopic and, being told she had three months to live, all she wanted to do was to look at her wedding photos. I remember her saying to me: ‘Tina, you’re an optometrist, you can help me read can’t you?’ There was no one around who we could call on to do a home visit and that really bothered me. I thought, how many other people are there, young and old, that cannot get to an opticians because of a genuine debilitating condition? Who is helping these people?
So I decided to help people with at-home eye tests. I had the optometry skills but realised that my ability had a much wider use than I’d been able to give in store. I wanted to use my skills to help the people that needed it the most.
This was just the start as, every day, my team of optometrists and schedulers make genuine changes in people’s lives.
These times have made me cry and made me realise that I’m not just a number, that as well as two profitable businesses, I have the skills of being able to give someone sight and I’ve just used those skills to totally enlighten and empower a person.
We get so inspired, in our daily test rounds, by the generation who are still so independent and still have so much life in them. They may have had bad experiences in life, they may have been robbed on their own doorstep, but we’re dealing with them as real people, as partners, as their local optician. Often these people truly look forward to seeing us every year, as they’ve got nobody else.
I’d implore anyone who wants a clinical challenge and to feel connected to people again to experience domiciliary work, even for a few days a week. It brings huge personal as well as professional benefits.
Tina Dickinson is the optometrist director for Specsavers Healthcall in east London and south Essex.