Job Availabilty with Dutch degrees

**jimius** · 10-20-2009, 02:31 PM

As the Netherlands has such lax laws and rules regarding the optician's trade I was wondering to what extent my attained degree would be usefull abroad.
Specifically Australia.

I recently finished my 4 year course at "level-4" (which is the highest within regular professions education) and am officially a "Optician Manager".

This means i'm qualified (in the Netherlands) to prescribe rx for customers (we don't call them patients here), edge lenses and assemble them into frames, sell frames, sell lenses (+advice), give contactlens instruction and basically other related activities.
I'm currently working on finishing my contact lens fitting course, though I already have experience with it in practice.

It's my understanding that prescribing rx and fitting ctl lenses is never done by an optician, and therefore are mostly restricted to working with lenses/frames only.
I asked my school about it, but they said they "didn't know". So I was hoping someone here could shed some light on the situation.
Many thanks in advance.

**wmcdonald** · 10-20-2009, 02:45 PM

Australia has now deregulated Opticians according to the Opticians of North America meeting held at VEE this past March. You would not be allowed to do any CL fitting or dispensing in that country. If any Aussies her, please correct me if the information we were provided in not correct.

In the US, the laws are also very lax in most places, but very strong in a few, particularly n the east coast. Wahsington State also has a good law.

I wish you luck in your endeavors.

**jimius** · 10-22-2009, 07:57 AM

Thanks for the info, so that would mean I would be able to prescribe Rx like I do now.
The CTL fitting is a shame, but nothing too bad. Is CTL fitting only performed by optometrists?