The Professor Bruce Evans episode

In episode 14 of The OT Podcast, we speak to Professor Bruce Evans, visiting professor at City St George’s, and London South Bank University. For 25 years, Bruce owned his own independent house practice in Essex, Cole Martin Tregaskis Optometrists, and for 15 years balanced this with the role of director of research at the Institute of Optometry.

Here are four things we learned about Bruce when recording The OT Podcast.

1 From medicine to optometry

An academic whom Bruce has extensively collaborated with during his career was once the young lecturer who inspired him as he sat across a table being interviewed as a prospective undergraduate at the City University – Professor David Edgar.

However, optometry was not Bruce’s first choice originally, as he shares: “Like many other optometrists, I was initially thinking of medicine.”

He explains: “I had some difficult interviews at medical schools and in looking around realised I wasn’t that committed to medicine. I loved biology, it was my favourite subject at school, and my favourite part of that was eyes. I had a careers evening at school and met a dentist, and thought that was not for me, and met an optometrist, and thought, ‘Yeah, I think I would like to do that’.”

2 Out of the arcade and into the home

At the time when Bruce stepped into the role of practice owner, realising an early career ambition, many opticians were starting to promote special offers and were placing an emphasis on advertising. However, Bruce did not follow suit, he shares.

Buying Cole Martin Tregaskis Optometrists, the practice was initially located in “a rather sleepy arcade in a town centre,” the optometrist said, sharing that: “At a time when most practices were moving into shopping centres, I decided to move my practice out to become a house practice.”

Bruce recalls one of the shop fitters who “basically told me I was an idiot.”

“He said, ‘Everyone is moving out of houses and into the High Street, you are doing the opposite, you think you’re clever, I think you’re mad’.”

However, Bruce was simply convinced that there would be demand for a practice with a clinical emphasis – and he was right.

“While, obviously, you still need to sell glasses, and selling glasses is an important part of it – there is no use in coming up with the best prescription in the world. If the patient doesn’t get glasses that fit well and suit them, they are not going to wear them – I wanted a practice that was driven by clinical care,” he said.

“I think there is a place for a plethora of approaches, and we had a more clinical approach. We were in Essex, but there were enough patients around the practice who valued that approach to make it successful, and that’s all you need,” he added.

3 The one quarter century itch

After 25 years running a success independent, in 2022 Bruce sold the practice to optometrist employees Dr Claire O’Leary and Anita Shah, with the pair buying him out over a three-year period. Today he practices there as an optometrist one day a week.

Asked what sparked his decision, which also saw him step down as director of research at the Institute of Optometry the following year, Bruce shares that while running the practice was always enjoyable, he started to find it a little repetitive.

“Annual things would come around, and I’d seen 25 of these annual events, and I thought it was time for new challenges,” he said.

“I was keen to get back to researching topics that I personally found most interesting,” Bruce said, adding: “At the same time I had been doing an increasing amount of expert witness work, which I found incredibly rewarding and enjoyable. That had got to the stage really where I needed to give it more time, and trying to split my time between all these activities was not working as well.”

However, Bruce is far from retired. Shortly after stepping down from both roles that had dominated his career, he established a new business called Evans’ Optometric Consultancy alongside three of his family members who all work within optometry.

“We mainly do research consultancy, expert witness work and teaching, he said.

“The company has really taken off, and is taking up more time than I anticipated, but in a really positive way.

“It’s made my life much more interesting at this stage.”

4 Sliding doors

Having had two successful careers in parallel, the first as a practice owner and the second as a researcher and academic, in which he has published over 270 papers, OT asked Bruce: If you couldn’t have had both careers, which one would you have picked?

“I would have real trouble choosing as, for me, one without the other is only half the picture,” Bruce said.

Continuing, he answered: “I guess if I had to choose, I would probably go for research as intellectually it is challenging,” before hesitating: “But then again, every time I’m in practice, and I’m typically in practice one day a week, I will see a patient who causes me to really scratch my head and be really puzzled by what’s going on. So I’d be happy with either.”

The OT Podcast

OT will release a new episode of The OT Podcast bimonthly. You can listen to The OT Podcast on our website, or via all the main podcast apps, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Castbox. Be sure to catch-up and listen to other episodes, featuring experts including Imran Hakim, Ian Cameron, Dame Mary Perkins, and Professor Nicola Logan.

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