eye examination skills

[Avalanche]

Hey yall,

Short intro, i'm a certified optician (in my country which is not US) and never had much trouble with my eye examinations.
After a couple of years out of the business i now have a job as optician again and perform a dozen eye examinations a day, some days more, some days less.

The autorefractor we have at my current workplace isn't as good as the one i'm used to. Especially the Cylinders and axis are way off for nearly customer.

Long story short, i think i might need some help in the actual eye examination. I been browsing the web but even in the videos it's hard to find awnsers.
How do people keep their skills up to shape? I've had some people come back for a remeasurement and it feels awful.

Pardon my english, it's not my native language.

Thanks for reading!

[vv0vv]

Sorry if I might offend you.

If you need the auto-refract to figure out the cylinder power your skills aren't there and you should go take some classes.

Low Cyl should be pretty easy. If they have higher cyl you can reference their old glasses usually.

You should also get your autorefractor recalibrated/replaced.

When in doubt give them the good ole' trial frame before finalizing the prescription.

[Avalanche]

Hey thanks for the response, no offense taken, this is why i'm here.

The thing is, i think i'm doing everything propperly and most customers are happy, but i feel like it could be better, i want to improve.
But since i took a big break out of the industry i feel uncertain.

And good point of getting it recalibrated, i will do that.

So where do people like me turn to in terms of eye examination, are there some good books out there?

[MrHoggs]

Hi Avalanche! If I understood correctly the autorefractor could be better so, maybe it’s the reason to ask your boss to buy the new one. You could make the argument for improving the quality of eye examinations. Ofcourse, it you feel that your skills improving is also needed here, then it would be better to find good local refresher training and some paper books if you want. Personally I don’t like paperwork and prefer to use online academic sources for almost all assignments

[Mactire]

So where do people like me turn to in terms of eye examination, are there some good books out there?

I see you are from Alkmaar, I'm also from Holland.
There are not a whole lot of resources available. Save from the optician courses offered; Zadkine and Dutch Health Tech Acadamy (DHTA) there are in house courses at Hans Anders, Specsavers and Pearle for example.

You could try contacting Zadkine or DHTA and see if there are options for a refresher course.

Finally I want to complement you on reaching out here. I have known plenty of opticians not sure of their skill who would not have done the same. So kudos to you. Your customers deserve this much effort.

[Avalanche]

Hey thanks for the comments guys i really do appreciate it!

Yeah here in The Netherlands i can't tell if there is such a thing, i could try and reach out to a school.. i know all the basics but some stuff might have slipped along the years. But hey.. you don't know what you don't know right? :) i did however find this online since it seems hard to find just about anything.

Thanks MrHoggs i see this is your first post, i feel honored :) thanks for reaching out. In the link you posted, i can pay some cash for a well-explained paper is it? i'm unfamiliar with this but i think i could be well worth some money. Did you get a paper off this before?

@Mactire Hey thanks man! yeah that was my intention, i want to give the best service possible and i don't have THAT many people coming back. But since not all customers are satisfied.. there must be room for improvement.
My previous worrkplaceused to have couple of optometrists as well, so i couyld always turn to them for answers, but this is not the case anymore. Appreciate the kind words mate :D

[Mactire]

@avalanche I also discussed this with my girlfriend, who is also an optician.
She told me that companies like Esslior offer refresher coarses. At least they used to.
So that might be another angle.