View from the High Street: Customising our care

Making every interaction count so that our patients feel cared for is so important for our profession.

There can be so many underlying factors when patients walk into our practice. They may have hidden illnesses, suffer from anxiety or have a fear of the unknown. They may have heard stories of what an eye care practitioner can detect or they may have had a bad experience previously. We do not know their real concerns until we have invested time to understand their needs.

With this in mind, we aim to observe the customer when they enter the practice. The clues are easy to see if you are familiar with the signs and symptoms of visual limitations. This is where training our front of house team becomes so important: understanding what it is like to be a minus six dioptre unaided or a patient with macula degeneration; the amazing way the eyes can appear normal from the outside and what we can find out following an eye examination. We have so many ways to simulate these visual experiences in our practices. Our empathy begins with understanding and relating to the patient.