As optical professionals, we should all believe that every one of our patients deserve our best. Serving as a Flight Medic in the Army, attention to detail often meant the difference between life and death. In the optical field, we rarely see that, but attention to detail is still so very important.
A misplaced PD or segment height can create just as much of a situation for a patient as an incorrect RX. This is why proper staff training and continued education are important. As I approach my 10th year in the field, I’m still learning something new every day. Reading an article in INVISION or having a conversation with your doctor can change the way you approach a situation.
Recently, a patient visited our office to update her eyeglasses. She was fitted for a single vision pair and had the glasses dispensed. She attempted to wear the new RX but encountered great difficulty. I scheduled an appointment with her so we could do some troubleshooting.
Before I had the patient in front of me, I did some background work. I needed to get the details so I could give this patient the appropriate attention. Looking back through previous lens orders and refractions, I found the patient to be myopic in both eyes for several years but now she had been prescribed opposite signs. I didn’t want to go into this appointment wearing a blank stare so I contacted her again to get even more information. I come to find out she’d had surgery on one eye three months back. After our conversation, I approached my practice’s doctor and we went over anisometropia (a condition in which the two eyes have unequal refractive power, generally by a difference in power of two diopters or more) in detail. I recall at some point in studying for my license this diagnosis coming up, but I didn’t remember the parameters where a patient might begin to struggle, revisiting the details of the diagnosis and talking it over with my doctor helped me to approach this patient’s situation with a better understanding.
ATTENTION TO DETAIL. I heard it over and over for eight years in the service and now it’s a motto I continue to use and pass along to our staff and new hires. Implementing this in your office or practice can increase the of confidence of your employees, as well as that of ownership and management teams alike.