A proper 'bedside' manner is not just a requirement for doctors. Optometrists must also take time to meet the client on a pleasant footing. Catherine Foley reports.
He spends his days looking into people's eyes. Rheumy eyes, listless eyes, tired sad eyes, but yes, "you do see the odd one that would strike you", says Tom Thornhill, optometrist in Cork city.
Answering a question about the dangers of falling in love while looking into someone's eyes (it is close to St Valentine's Day, after all), he says matter-of-factly: "You're not looking in for the whole half-hour."
He walks into work each day to Egan's Optician's on Lavitt's Quay in Cork with a bounce in his step. He doesn't wear a uniform, just a shirt and tie. It's likely his tie collection will grow over the coming years because he is in this business for the long haul.
He starts at 9 a.m. and he finishes at 5.30 p.m. The days are regular. The work is routine. The skill is in "knowing what looks normal and what isn't. You've to go through the routine of the refraction to get it right," he says. "Like most jobs, you repeat the same thing day in, day out, but everybody is different. They all come in with their own stories. You chat away to them. That's what I like about it. It's the same each day, but it's different too.
"You have your own testing rooms," he says. There is a comfortable upright chair for the person who is being tested. "You check the general health of the eye," he says. He sees about 15 people a day, but "it could be more or it could be less. They come to us if their vision has to be checked. If we notice anything untoward then we can refer them on" - possibly to Dr John Traynor, the eye specialist upstairs.
The equipment used by Thornhill includes an ophthalmoscope, which looks into the back of the eye; a slit-lamp, which is "like a microscope that is used to examine the front of the eye", and a tonometer, which is used to check for glaucoma - "it measures the pressure of the fluid within the eye", he says. And all the lenses are in a trial-frame. "You are one-to-one with the person for 20 minutes to half an hour. It's important that you are warm and chat away to them - and that they go away happy," he says. No one is nervous going in, he adds. "There's no reason to be. When you are dealing with people, you have to have some kind of manner. You have to be polite - it's like any job that's dealing with the public."
He decided on this career because his father, John Thornhill, was an optician (he is still practising in Kildorrery, near Middleton, Co Cork). As a young boy, he often saw his father fixing glasses and generally working in the area every day. He wanted to follow in his footsteps. Ultimately, he would like to move back home and take over the practice, he says.
He filled in his CAO form in his Leaving Cert year at St Coleman's College in Fermoy, Co Cork, in the early 1990s, applying for the course in DIT Kevin Street in Dublin. "The points were high enough," he recalls. He didn't get a place immediately after the Leaving Cert, so he went to UCD instead to study science. After one year, he left to go to Glasgow Caledonian University to study for a diploma in opthalmic dispensing. The two-year course was, he says, mainly to do with the frame and the lenses. It was "interesting," he says, "and a very good grounding as well". He was then successful in gaining a place on the optometry diploma course in DIT (which has since become a degree course). He also had to sit the professional exams, which take a day. "They're difficult enough," he recalls.
During the course, there was a lot of science in the first year. For those thinking about a career in optometry, he says "it would be handy to have physics and biology - they are heavily done". In fourth year he spent the first six months working out in practice in SpecSavers in Cook Street in Cork.
The prospects for employment are good for optometrists, too, he says. And payment-wise, "you get a nice rise up from your college lifestyle."
