Opticians, Dispensing — Tasks

Task statements

• Supervise the training of student opticians.
• Order and purchase frames and lenses.
• Grind lens edges, or apply coatings to lenses.
• Repair damaged frames.
• Arrange and maintain displays of optical merchandise.
• Instruct clients in how to wear and care for eyeglasses.
• Measure clients' bridge and eye size, temple length, vertex distance, pupillary distance, and optical centers of eyes, using measuring devices.
• Verify that finished lenses are ground to specifications.
• Evaluate prescriptions in conjunction with clients' vocational and avocational visual requirements.
• Recommend specific lenses, lens coatings, and frames to suit client needs.
• Assist clients in selecting frames according to style and color, and ensure that frames are coordinated with facial and eye measurements and optical prescriptions.
• Maintain records of customer prescriptions, work orders, and payments.
• Heat, shape, or bend plastic or metal frames to adjust eyeglasses to fit clients, using pliers and hands.
• Show customers how to insert, remove, and care for their contact lenses.
• Determine clients' current lens prescriptions, when necessary, using lensometers or lens analyzers and clients' eyeglasses.
• Prepare work orders and instructions for grinding lenses and fabricating eyeglasses.
• Obtain a customer's previous record, or verify a prescription with the examining optometrist or ophthalmologist.
• Sell goods such as contact lenses, spectacles, sunglasses, and goods related to eyes, in general.
• Fabricate lenses to meet prescription specifications.
• Perform administrative duties, such as tracking inventory and sales, submitting patient insurance information, and performing simple bookkeeping.
• Assemble eyeglasses by cutting and edging lenses, and fitting the lenses into frames.