Learning over money
From the day you graduate, you step onto the road towards becoming a mature clinician. The only way this can happen is by seeing patients, which means the more patient traffic you are subjected to, the sooner you will become a competent clinician, ready to deal with any vision problem. A common trap that many young graduates fall into is prioritising money over learning, meaning that your primary goal in finding a job is how much you will be paid. You may earn more, but end up in someone’s branch office without a mentor and see only one or two patients a day, which will significantly slow your progress toward becoming a mature clinician. The primary objective of finding your first job should be to secure a position in a busy practice and work under the guidance of an experienced optometrist. This will present the learning experience that will stand you in good stead for the rest of your career. Often, the best opportunities in line with this strategy present themselves in rural towns or public hospital clinics. Be brave enough to choose learning over money, even if the location is not your first choice.
Clinical Skills
Real learning only begins after graduation, when you face a full-time job as a clinician. It is impossible to fake clinical skill, and you only become good at it through experience. One can never create a high-performance practice without excellent clinical skills. Postgraduate studies will place you at a higher level. For instance, becoming an optometrist with ocular therapeutics will offer an excellent opportunity to differentiate your practice. Continued Professional Development should not be seen as a box to tick in order to retain your HPCSA registration. Reading remains an essential part of learning and should be an integral part of your development as a clinician. To be considered an excellent optometrist, one must be able to integrate all areas of optometry, including refraction, pathology, binocular vision, contact lenses, low vision, optics, and product knowledge. The ability to draw on all these areas will ensure the best possible clinical outcomes, with an action plan for each patient. Product knowledge is essential to make the right choice for your patient. If you fit a contact lens, you must know all the physical properties of that lens. What is required is a broad base of knowledge to draw from.
Decide what kind of optometrist you want to be
Some optometrists are in the top 10% of all income earners in South Africa. However, some are struggling to achieve the lifestyle they hoped for. A career path must have a plan, and a plan must incorporate goals. A goal must be well-defined, realistic, and achievable by a specific date, and it must be well-documented.
Are you prepared to give what it takes to run a high-performance practice with a heavy patient load every day? Do you have your mind set on serving the less fortunate in the public service? Do you aim to be a locum optometrist? Do you want to be the best in class in advanced contact lens practice? Do you want to achieve financial independence by the age of thirty? One thing in common among all the choices is that you have to be a good clinician. A poor clinician will soon run out of locum gigs. To become a mature clinician, it is essential to see a large number of patients, preferably under the guidance of a skilled mentor. Moreover, today’s optometrists need to understand the deeper business issues, such as financial management, planning, funding, budgeting, and marketing.
Emotional labour
Emotional labour is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfil the emotional requirements of a job. It is about facial expressions, body language, and communication style that will make your patient feel comfortable in your presence. Emotional labour, is a phrase coined by sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild in her book The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling (1983). It involves suppressing undesirable feelings and displaying or cultivating desired ones when dealing with people in the workplace. Even when feeling miserable! This is what we do as optometrists, whether willingly or unwillingly; yet, most of us do not have a tangible measure of how emotional labour can impact our clinical journey. The way you make your patient feel will determine her willingness to enter into a long-term relationship with your practice. An optometrist without empathy will struggle to keep patients.
Professional Writing
An integral part of an optometrist’s job is to write referral letters to ophthalmologists and other medical officers. Poorly written letters will reflect badly on your ability as a clinician, fairly or unfairly. Grammarly is an excellent app for correcting grammar and spelling.
Leadership
The kind of leadership you provide to your staff will reflect the practice's overall brand. There is a big difference between finding yourself in a default position as a leader and being a good leader who provides leadership. Leadership does not come naturally to everyone, and it is therefore essential to study the characteristics of effective leadership. A poor leader is unlikely to have a strong team. The bottom line is that leadership plays a significant role in your business's success, and you must guard against the attitude of “I’m the Boss and that’s it!”
Business acumen
It is essential to recognise that there is a significant distinction between practice management and the underlying business issues. Practice management encompasses the day-to-day operations of a business, including tasks such as processing invoices, opening patient files, and placing laboratory orders. If you never learn how to set up an invoice in your whole career, it won’t be a big deal. That’s why you employ staff. However, you must come to grips with the deeper issues that drive the business, such as funding, marketing, differential advantage, brand building, financial management, and business planning. Far too many optometrists abdicate their responsibility for steering the business's financial well-being. Nobody is ever going to care more about your business than you yourself. What you need is a basic understanding of these business concepts, such as the income statement and the basic principles of marketing. It’s challenging to delve into these business concepts while you are employed and not personally affected by them. But when the time comes, have the will to learn about them. All that is required is the will to learn about your business. It is unnecessary to have a formal education in this regard.
The location
There is no question that any optometrist with 10 years of practice experience would be best off owning their own premises. After 10 years, you should not be reliant on the patronage in a Mall. By then, you should have a database of returning patients who would follow you to your own stand-alone premises. It is worth noting that once you have an established practice in a Mall, it can be very difficult to relocate, as you have to synchronise your lease termination with the search for new premises. Rent of R48,000 per month with an annual escalation of 8% will amount to over R65 million in rent over a thirty-year career. Due to rental escalations in Malls, your net profit will eventually be diluted.
Planning your exit
This may seem like a ludicrous notion to a young optometrist, but it is important to begin with the end in mind. The kind of practice you build will one day determine the options you have to exit. For instance, if you are a solo practitioner, highly specialised in an area of interest, it may not be so easy to find a successor who can do justice to your mode of practice. At some point, you will have to create your buyer. On the other hand, if by the time you reach retirement and you have one or two associates, you will have more attractive options to exit. It is a naked truth that you will not be able to survive in retirement from investing the amount you sold your practice for.
Write down your dream
A goal should be specific, attainable, and measurable within a specified time frame. The best career advice I ever received was to write down my goals. It is a commitment to yourself about what you want to achieve in your work, family, and personal lives. Writing it down lends a different perspective. It is there to always remind you of what you hankered to achieve. These can include owning a practice within five years, running a marathon, losing weight, learning another language, or attending a concert in Vienna. There must always be a documented plan. As the truism goes, those who don’t know where they are going usually get there.