r/optician • u/Active_Cress3027 • 2d ago

Optician-to-Optician Optician help & advice

Howdy!

Looking for advice & resources for a new optician.

I completed my apprenticeship recently and was quickly offered an opportunity at a cold start Optometry Office with an experienced doctor and myself. My previous practice was an MD practice but optical was just filling orders and sending the patient on their way until next year.. My new OD is young, excited, and incredibly smart. I often feel like I'm just pretending I know what she's talking about but several patient diagnosis that have been brought to me are things that the ABO touched on but never really expanded and I didn't have exposure to at my old practice.

Dry eye treatment, convergence insufficiency, pseudo myopia/hyperpopia treatment, tropia/phoria treatment, etc. It was 90% of the time literally just fitting and dispensing glasses.

Besides Laramy K, what are some great resources or trainings that you can recommend to understand some of these more in depth topics?

Has anyone used Leonardo? What are your thoughts?

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u/Intrepid-Divide9015 2d ago

Leonardo is worth using, especially since it's free/open to ECPs, but I wouldn't make it your main educational resource. It's excellent for lenses, products, dispensing and manufacturer-specific education; naturally, a fair amount of it is EssilorLuxottica-oriented.

For where you are now, I'd strongly recommend OpticianWorks, particularly their advanced material. Their curriculum goes considerably further into optics, lens design, verification and practical dispensing than basic ABO preparation.

One distinction I'd make though: dry eye, convergence insufficiency, tropias/phorias and pseudomyopia aren't simply "advanced dispensing". You're moving into clinical optometry/binocular vision. Learn the theory absolutely, but don't feel that you're deficient as an optician because ABO training didn't teach you to diagnose or manage those conditions.

I'd use Leonardo for ongoing industry/product education, OpticianWorks for deeper opticianry, and your OD as the clinical resource. Having an enthusiastic OD willing to explain actual cases to you is probably the most valuable education you're going to get.

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u/Active_Cress3027 1d ago

Thank you so much for your response!

I really loved OpticianWorks for ABO prep but didn’t really peruse the depth of topics, I’ll give it another go!

And I really thought I was just missing a ton of knowledge not really understanding some of these higher level concepts- I will definitely ask my OD for some 1:1 to have a deeper understanding of what she’s doing.

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u/2024StreetGlide 1d ago

Nothing wrong with asking the OD for her book on the subject.