Our A-one Optometric Equipment Cheatsheet
Optometrists need quite a bit more than professional knowledge, more important even than all their experience and training: for all this apart, what they actually tend to wish for foremost is sure to be specialist instruments to help them produce results as precisely as they can. Let’s use as examples three major items: covering diagnosis, the comfort of your patients, and storage and accessibility, and key points to remember in buying each: be they new, used, refurbished or remanufactured. Non-contact, dynamic contour, applanation, handheld disposable, and pocket models are among the many different styles of tonometer available to buy and essential for the measurement of intraocular pressure. A selection of models or a particular tonometer may be ideal for even the most ardently discerning opthalmologist. Make sure that the tonometers you buy are of the highest quality. Your diagnostic process becomes significantly simpler if you can boast both ease of use and accuracy with this kind of ophthalmic equipment.
Getting your patient correctly for a proper diagnosis is not easy and must be accomplished anew for each patient. When your concentration turns to selecting exam chairs for your practice you absolutely must focus on the comfort factor and not just flexibility. Look for fully adjustable exam chairs that can raise and lower even the largest patient to the correct height. The exam chairs you select must also support the patient and make her examination as comfortable as as can be. Long and in-depth appointments will prove this to be really essential.
All the equipment you employ must be stored somewhere, and that should be somewhere which can be easily accessed when needed. The usual solution is a collection of treatment cabinets with certain key characteristics — flexible shelving, leveling glides in case of uncertain flooring, and other basic points. Cabinets like these are effortless to transport to any area of your practice that most requires their contents and to hold all else you’ll find that you use. Take care, however, that you buy a cabinet which won’t be too cumbersome for hassle free re-positioning.
Your ability to do your job will be determined in part by the equipment you employ, e.g. your selection of tonometer, treatment cabinet, and examination chair. Consequently, start your ordering of instruments only after exactly establishing what you really need. As everyone knows fitting your practice with awkward or inaccurate equipment will be guaranteed to evoke all sorts of problems; inversely, the smoother to handle and the more useful your instrumentation, the better you’re likely to do in real life practice. The efficiency that the right equipment can offer your practice is hard to believe.
In conclusion, the decisions you make when ordering your equipment will be bound to have a considerable impact on how well you do in your professional role in general, and, albeit fairly indirectly, on the development of the entire practice.
