Adam Sampson: “You are our members, and we want to be there for you wherever you need us”

Arriving there a year ago felt like travelling not only across the country, but back in time, returning me to my youth growing up in Maidstone. Even the names on the High Street were reassuringly familiar: Sainsbury’s, M&S, Boots, WH Smith – all present and correct.

Little over 12 months later, that impression of stolidity has begun to erode. Smiths has gone – or at least changed its name to a fictitious TG Jones, and other staples of High Street life, such as Claire’s Accessories, Russell & Bromley and New Look, have gone. For Winchester High Street the number of empty retail units seems to be on the increase.

If the recent Mintel report on the health of High Street optometry is any indication, our profession appears, for now at least, to be relatively well-insulated from the economic pressures affecting much of the wider High Street. But we should not take that resilience for granted. As I have said before, while the market overall remains healthy, many smaller independents are struggling to absorb the combined impact of rising costs and tightening margins – pressures being felt across the economy. Although the overall number of optometry practices may not be declining, the structure of the market is changing rapidly, with the shift from sole independents to larger groups and networks continuing to accelerate.

If, on the one hand, being part of a larger organisation helps businesses survive and optometrists to offer their clinical excellence to people with eye and vision issues, that is perhaps not a bad thing. However, the move towards a more corporatised profession has implications for optometrists themselves. Career expectations may have to change: more practitioners qualifying into the profession will have to face up to the inevitability that they will spend their time as optometrists as employees or locums rather than eventually ending up as sole business owners. Many may look to build portfolio careers, working part-time in High Street practice and part-time in, say, a hospital setting or academia. Some may choose to leave early and use their skills elsewhere, or prioritise other areas of their life. There are already some emerging indications of significantly higher rates of younger (particularly female) optometrists leaving the GOC register.

Our role is to support you wherever you are in your career and whatever your aspirations may be

For the AOP, those emerging trends are hugely important. Our role is to support you wherever you are in your career and whatever your aspirations may be. Over the years, we have developed a tremendous suite of tools to help optometrists develop their clinical practice or explore business ownership. We have also invested more in our support for employed optometrists and developed things like the locum logbook to support those who opt for self-employment.

However, if more members move toward portfolio careers, we will need to look again at how we can provide you with support and guidance in this area, be that via education, training or career support. If we are seeing a rise in the number of members who are combining their practice with childcare responsibilities, we need to think about that too. And if more members are seeing optometry not as a lifetime vocation but as a starting point for their career, we should explore whether there is anything we can do to help those who wish to exit the profession. You are our members, and we want to be there for you wherever you need us.