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For years I’ve had my eyes tested every two years, just because I feel like I should because of my job. I feel like I should be able to demonstrate that I have good vision, therefore I have no excuse for putting things in the wrong place!

But there was a little bit of vanity in this too because I knew how good my eyes were.

They’re the one part of me that a Healthcare Professional used to say “my God, that works really well!”

There was no other part of me that they said that about.

Of late though, I’ve known that something wasn’t great and I’ve known that my left eye was deteriorating so I took myself off to have a test sooner rather than later.

That was an interesting process to observe, my choice of Optician, because I struggled and found it difficult.

I’ve been to the relatively expensive guys locally but they kept changing my Optician as they moved the chess pieces around and I could build no relationships. I had had a great relationship with a guy there, who was a veteran swimmer, and who I trusted completely but without warning I saw someone else and then someone else again.

I then went to the young guy trying to make his way but he wasn’t doing it very well and it made me nervous that it was just a little but haphazard, although the care I got straight from him was great.

So I decided to go to Boots (no, honestly I did!) because they have the biggest range of glasses and I knew that I would be choosing some. My Brother-in-Law goes there and he says it’s fine.

So on Sunday morning at 11:00am I pitched up with my son for an appointment which I booked online.

Several interesting points here which would reflect back to the work I do as a dentist.

The first person that took me through did three investigations on three different machines. One to take photographs of my fundi (the machine didn’t work and the computer froze, that cost me an extra 45 minutes) the check of my prescription (I didn’t have one) and then to fire the air into my eyes to check the pressures and then a third to check my peripheral vision.

I chatted away to the guy that was doing it and it turned out he was a student in Optometry at Aston University.

I was really cool with that but nobody told me. Nobody told me that the person operating the machines wasn’t qualified. I’m sure he was qualified to operate the machines, I just thought that they were an Optician.

The other interesting thing is that there were two separate stations to do these tests and they were both in the same room, so as I was having my test done so was someone else. I found that quite interesting on a confidentiality basis, but we moved along and that was fine.

It turned out that two out of the three tests that were done weren’t done properly and at the end of the eye test I had to wait for another 40 minutes to have them done again. No real drama there but the system just broke down a little bit.

I then eventually go to see the Optician who works for Boots. She was extremely good (and extremely gorgeous but that has nothing to do with it!) but she was just procedural; battered by the fact that she was in on a Sunday seeing a patient for an eye test every 15 minutes.

I did that thing of just making sure that she appreciated the fact that I had some basic knowledge of healthcare so she had to pay a little bit more attention to what she was doing and we did have a laugh and a joke.

It turns out I have Macular Degeneration in my left eye (only minor but there’s another bit of the body going on the left hand side -  at least it’s all breaking on that side). Another fascinating point was that I said “can you just explain that to me and the significance” and she said “you can take some supplements for it, you’ll be able to do the research yourself”!!

This is where we’ve got to in healthcare.

We had a discussion about whether I should have glasses or not - it’s still on the cusp of that – but I decided I needed to have some, particularly for when I walk into my surgery to look at things for other people and realise I can’t see the number on the depth gauges!

So I chose the glasses with the help of Callum but the Optician had told me that the pressure was high on my left eye (warning sign!) and that they hadn’t managed to get the photography of the left fundus which would be able to show the Macular Degeneration more clearly. We waited for about half an hour, had the tests repeated and then waited again, only to be told by someone (who I hadn’t met yet) that the tests were all fine and I could go home after I’d chosen my glasses properly. A lady came and sat with us and started on the cross sell and upsell dance, trying to get me to get the lighter lenses or the more scratch resistant lenses or a second pair of glasses half price etc. until we finalised just on the ones that I wanted with the standard lenses with the standard scratch resistance etc. I paid my money and I get the glasses a week on Sunday.

So how does it affect what I take back to my place? How does it change what I’m trying to do and how does it influence or congratulate me on the way we are?

It’s just corporate healthcare.

It’s OK but it’s not better than OK.

They have a system and they stick to the system and everybody does what the protocol says. It took a few minutes to break the barrier down of the Optician herself and to have a laugh a joke but eventually I could, but it had to be me that initiated that. It’s not initiated from their point of view.

Ideally they don’t want to talk to people too much because it takes up the time they have to use to see other people.

The one advantage that Boots does have over every other Optician is the amount of stock they can carry.

I cannot possibly buy a set of glasses without putting them on my face, in fact I am taking a huge risk buying them without my wife being present because she’ll probably hate them! But they get to carry the stock, but only in that shop.

I had to go to the biggest Boots in Nottingham to make sure they had the stock available and this is what the little guys will find really difficult - to be able to keep enough stock for people to try things on for them to buy the glasses on the day.

In the end it was well packaged up for them, it was 90 minutes for £300 including the glasses. So it was a chance to reflect on where we can be different at The Campbell Clinic and The Campbell Academy.

We’re personal, we go above and beyond, we make people laugh, we share personal information, we initiate the conversation and don’t wait for it to be initiated. We’re big enough to carry the stock but we’re still small enough to be nimble and to alter and change as necessary.

Boots almost nailed the corporate dentistry thing at high level, but I can see why it would never quite have gotten to where it could have gotten if it’d had a different philosophical approach.

Blog Post Number: 1704