We are a boutique practice focused on superior patient care and service, located downtown near King & Spadina. We are looking for the right person to join our eye care team as an optometric assistant/optician. Attention to detail and exceptional communication skill is essential. Experience in the optical industry is preferred. We are looking for a full time assistant although we would consider part-time.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Advising patients on lens and frame selections
• Ordering glasses and contact lenses
• Repairing and adjusting eyeglasses
• Training contact lens patients
• Keeping the office clean and tidy
• Assisting the doctors as required
• Reception and telephone handling
• Scheduling patients on the computer
• Responding to email inquiries
• Preparing charts and filing
• Calling patients to confirm their appointments
• Billing OHIP, third-parties and patients
• Preliminary testing of patients

Qualifications

• Successful completion of at least a two-year post secondary certificate or diploma program or two years previous experience in an optometric office or optical
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills
• Ability to demonstrate interpersonal skills and work in a team environment is required
• Proficiency in Microsoft Windows and Office suite or similar software

Apply

Please send your contact information, a resume in PDF, MS Word or RTF format.
Applicants must be eligible to work legally in Canada.
Please note only applicants selected for interviews will be contacted.

“Optometrists will now be able to prescribe treatments for conditions ranging from routine bacterial eye infections to more serious diseases including glaucoma.

The change will alleviate wait times in emergency rooms and walk-in clinics for patients with eye-related problems.”

This means Dr. Heeney & Dr. Wilkinson can prescribe treatment for conditions including red eyes, infections, allergies, dry eye, glaucoma etc without having to refer you to a walk-in clinic or your family doctor. This means faster easier access to treatment when you need it.

For more information on the eye conditions that optometrists can now treat and prescribe, please visit the Ontario Association of Optometrists website at: www.eyecareoao.com.

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Feel free to stop by next week and say hello. If you have any questions feel free to contact us.

The iPhone app is really easy to use and very cool. You take a picture of yourself. It works best if your ears show and try to get a close picture that fills the box with good lighting on your face. You then drag the icons for your right/left eyes and your ear to the correct location on your picture. You can play with the positions to get the frame centered on you face. Then try on different shapes of lenses, frame styles and colours. You can email the photos to friends and family to get their opinions. When you have made your choice email us and we can make them up for you. Some of my personal favorites are:

Photo by Librarian by Day

The NY Times Bits Blog has a great post about eye strain and new e-readers like the Kindle, Nook, iPad and others.

“Most of what our mothers told us about our eyes was wrong,” said Dr. Travis Meredith, chair of the ophthalmology department at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. “Sitting close to a television, or computer screen, isn’t bad for our eyes. It’s a variety of other factors that can cause physical fatigue.”

For example, the ergonomics of reading screens and the lack of blinking when we stare at them play a big role in eye fatigue. “The current problem with reading on screens is that we need to adjust our bodies to our computer screens, rather than the screens adjusting to us,” Dr. Meredith said.”

Which e-reader offers the best reading experience?  It depends on where you’re doing most of your reading.

“E Ink has a very low contrast ratio. Although it can offer an excellent reading experience in bright sunlight, the screens can become uncomfortable to use in dark settings because of the lack of contrast and backlighting on the screen.

LCD screens, meanwhile, have long struggled to offer good viewing angles for reading. Apple’s latest IPS LCD screens include extremely wide viewing angles, but the reflective glass on the screen could be a hindrance in brightly lit situations.”

The short answer is if you’re experience headaches and other eye strain symptoms, while it might be your e-reader, you might want to consider scheduling an appointment with your eye care professional.

This fall we have two 4th year University of Waterloo optometry students, Eva and Reena, doing primary care internships at our office. They spent the summer in the US doing medical therapeutic optometry. This fall they join our office in Toronto focusing on primary care optometry. They will back at the University of Waterloo in the winter.

Help us welcome Eva and Reena to Toronto.

Do you or your children experience:

• Frequent headaches or eyestrain
• Avoidance of close work
• Poor judgment of depth
• Double vision
• Squints one or both eyes
• Poor eye-hand coordination
• Tendency to cover or close one eye
• Poor reading comprehension
• Loss of place, repetition, and/or omission of words while reading
• Poor handwriting
• Uses finger as a guide while reading
• Letter and word reversals
• Been diagnosed with a learning disability

If you do, the first step is to “schedule a comprehensive eye exam”:/schedule with Dr. Wilkinson or Dr. Heeney to determine any areas of weakness in the visual system, the most appropriate treatment and realistic expectations of what vision therapy can do to strengthen the visual weakness. At our office we are pleased to offer individualized vision therapy programs that include a variety of free-space and computer-based activities. The home based computer programs allow us to use the internet to monitor patient progress and adjust the program depending on progress. Patient compliance is critical to the success of any vision therapy program, if you don’t do the exercises you will not see improvement. We find if patients are able to do the activities at home on their own schedule compliance is greatly improved.

A recent study, Convergence Insufficiency Treatment Trial, looked at the most common disorder of binocular vision. Convergence insufficiency is when your ability to focus both eyes together at a close distance is decreased for your age and causing symptoms. The study confirmed two important points. Firstly, that convergence insufficiency can be effectively treated by vision therapy. And secondly, that the most successful therapy included a combination of in-office, and at-home exercises.

There are many disorders of binocular vision and visual processing that can benefit from different types of vision therapy. We look forward to examining your eyes and discussing your best course of action.

Frames that hold the lenses face similar issues. Materials that go into making frames vary from metals like nickel, steel, stainless steel, titanium, gold and platinum to plastics and acrylics. Some plastics even have thermal memory properties. All of these products need to have very pure ingredients that go into making them in order for the frames to have the desired properties of strength, durability and flexibility. Some of these raw ingredients are recycled and refined but tracing and certifying the “greenness” is difficult.

The manufacturing of contact lenses face the same issues as lenses and frames. We tend to forget but contact lenses are medical devices, biocompatibility and ocular health need to be the first priority. I’ve had patients express concern about disposable contact lenses and the waste packaging. Yes, there is more packaging that gets tossed in the garbage but they are much healthier for the eye than conventional lenses. There is less risk of infection and inflammatory responses with disposable contact lenses. We feel that the health benefits far out way the environmental impact of the packaging.

Our suppliers and ourselves, try to do day-to-day activities that can make a difference from recycling, turning lights off and using recycled paper products and email communications. We try to minimize shipping as much as possible and ship items together whenever possible. This past year we have started to do the City of Toronto organics green bin at our office, it is amazing how much less garbage goes out these days.

The best way to make an environmental impact with your glasses is to donate your old glasses to third world programs. At our office we collect glasses for various programs. You can drop off any old glasses at your convenience.

Dr. Heeney appeared on the February 15, 2008 episode of Doctor in the House on Slice. The 4 minute segment talks about choosing sunglasses for UV protection.

“Our moms talk about the downside of “mommy brain”. Medical Researcher Carole Watson explains what mommy brain is and why it’s actually a good thing, and Optometrist Kristin Heeney shows us how to find the perfect pair of sunglasses. Plus we’ve got Q&A with Dr. Dave.” – Episode 1030 Doctor in the House

Let us know if you have questions about U/V coatings for your glasses and sunglasses or if you need to book an appointment to discuss your options.

Additional resources about UV protection for your eyes

• Health Canada on Sunglasses
• Choosing the right sunglasses
• American Optometric Association – U/V Protection

More about Dr. Wilkinson