Dispensing optician

You would help customers choose glasses and contact lenses that suit and fit them and meet their needs. You’d order the spectacles and contact lenses and make sure they fit.

You would create orders for glasses and lenses using the prescriptions from an optometrist, who examines and tests eyes or an ophthalmologist, an eye surgeon.

You’d work with each individual customer to select the right spectacles or contact lenses for them.

You would:

• Use equipment to measure customers for spectacles or contact lenses

• Use the measurements to calculate distances and angles and assess the options for types of lenses

• Give people advice and information about the options for lens options, such as single vision or bifocal

• Advise people on the style, weight and colour of frames

• Fit, adjust and repair frames

You’d be working in retail, so you’d be marketing and selling glasses and contact lenses.

With further training, you could also show customers how to use and care for contact lenses.

You might work in partnership with an optometrist, where you would be involved in managing the business.

• General Optical Council - Careers information

• NHS Education for Scotland – Training for the healthcare workforce including higher education and professional development

• Disclosure Scotland – more about the Protecting Vulnerable Groups Scheme