Optician

Heat, shape, or bend plastic or metal frames to adjust eyeglasses to fit clients, using pliers and hands.

Sell goods such as contact lenses, spectacles, sunglasses, and other goods related to eyes in general.

Instruct clients in how to wear and care for eyeglasses.

Assist clients in selecting frames according to style and color, and ensure that frames are coordinated with facial and eye measurements and optical prescriptions.

Recommend specific lenses, lens coatings, and frames to suit client needs.

Grind lens edges, or apply coatings to lenses.

Fabricate lenses to meet prescription specifications.

Verify that finished lenses are ground to specifications.

Maintain records of customer prescriptions, work orders, and payments.

Order and purchase frames and lenses.

Arrange and maintain displays of optical merchandise.

Perform administrative duties such as tracking inventory and sales, submitting patient insurance information, and performing simple bookkeeping.

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.

Assemble eyeglasses by cutting and edging lenses, and fitting the lenses into frames.

Supervise the training of student opticians.

Measure clients' bridge and eye size, temple length, vertex distance, pupillary distance, and optical centers of eyes, using measuring devices.

Obtain a customer's previous record, or verify a prescription with the examining optometrist or ophthalmologist.