Launched for the first time in May 2009, the OE Summer School Academy has proved itself to be a huge success with the 49 optometry undergraduate students who were enrolled. Each student completed a 6 week placement in stores across the UK and was required to complete a series of work based tasks. The tasks were designed to increase the student’s awareness of and aptitude for the clinical and commercial requirements of optometric practice.
Examples of the work based tasks include:
- Delivering clinical in-store training
- Business analysis tasks (Building a successful contact lens business and mystery shopper report)
- SV, Bifocal and Varifocal dispensing
- Understanding store targets and creative action planning to achieve them
- Refractive surgery overview
- Educational excursion to the Johnson & Johnson Vision Care Institute – This experience enabled the students to better identify and fulfill a patientand#39;s needs and expectations, which included personality typing
Optical Express now, for the first time, has a large number of high calibre students who; understand the in-store systems, are commercially focused and are used to working with our full product range, have confidence and trust in Optical Express’s training programs and are eager to join our graduate optometrist program.
These students are now being aligned with pre-registration vacancies for the year beginning July 2010. The university road-shows to promote next year’s Summer School Academy will commence later this month.
