COVID-19 affording opportunities to reset for the future

By Optometry Australia

Key video messages

• As business owners, or as employees, it is rare to have the time to focus on, and to plan for the future. While the COVID-19 pandemic has caused substantial and adverse disruption, it is also affording opportunities to take this time to start thinking about the way we work and if necessary, reset for the future.
• Optometry 2040, the long-term transformational blueprint identified by Optometry Australia that would bring substantial change to our sector in a highly disruptive world, urged us to rethink business practices and patient care in order to create a sustainable and viable future.
• Are we being innovative enough? Are we thinking more about patient needs now and not about what the patient of the future will need? How are consumers shaping health outcomes? How can we embrace technology better? What training do we need, not only for ourselves as optometrists but also for our practice staff, to meet changing patient demands?
• COVID-19 has definitely shaken us but if embraced, practice owners and employees can emerge from this crisis as better, more resilient and more aware with refined and tailored clinical and patient management processes in place.
• It would be terrific to learn from members if they too have taken this crisis as an opportunity to start planning for the future, a future that perhaps now looks a little – or a whole lot – different to what it might have if we had continued business as usual.
• We welcome members studies outlining how they have turned the COVID-19 crisis into an opportunity to innovate and reassess how they will do business in the future, or how they will seek to be employed in the future. Send your case studies to: policy@optometry.org.au.