I recently had a young chap in Kingscourt, enquiring about contact lenses. He did not require an eye exam as he had been recently tested elsewhere, and we contacted this optician to request a copy of the prescription. They faxed us a copy of his entire record card.

His entire record card had his prescription printed on it- I believe it was printed onto the record card before the optician got it- it was probably acquired with an autorefractor.

The only information written on the card was his visual acuity – how well he could see – with the (probably autorefractor) result, and one other piece of handwritten information – “routine test”.

It is sad to see that any professional would consider this to be an adequate eye examination- there was no questioning (or at least no record of questioning) about the lad’s general health, previous history with his eyes or problems that he, or the family may have. Legally, if it isn’t written down, it was not done!

There were apparently no tests such as eye control status- he has a squint and a lazy eye that was not recorded, and there was no record of any examination into the health of the inside of his eyes.

Unfortunately, eye exams done properly take time, and if your business is based on volume of spectacles sold, it is imperative to do as many tests as possible, and maybe more in a day.

You get what you pay for.

Had another one the other day, blank except for the information written “lazy Right eye”. It happens that it was the left eye that was lazy.

To be fair, the patient may have given the optometrist the wrong information, but equally, how long would it have taken to amend this?

At McLeish Optometrists we take 40 minutes to do an eye test. If you go elsewhere you may not have such a long test