The changes in nowadays’ working environment have brought also some challenges into the optical working field. Furthermore, during the upcoming years opticians will be facing the necessity to offer wider variety of services. The responsibility and job description of an optician will be steered more and more to the direction of a person who is capable of inspecting the healthiness of eyes. Due to this, more attention and resources have to be drawn to the education in order to maintain the good level of professional skills. As a matter of fact, an optician is a legalized health care professional, who is obligated by law to retain a satisfactory level of professional skills.

Our thesis consisted of the planning and organizing of Oulussa opitaan! –updating education day for opticians, which took place in hotel Scandic the 26th of April 2014. During the day several relevant and important subjects were covered, namely; condition of having dry eyes, findings of fundus, the newest innovations of progressive lenses and phoria. Subjects mentioned were selected based on the inquiry we made beforehand.

The objective of our thesis was to develop the professional skills of opticians by organizing an upscale educational day (in form of lecturing) which deals with current topics. As opticians develop their professional skills, it is beneficial not only for themselves but obviously also for their customers as it brings the service quality to a higher level. Therefore, one of the main goals (for a longer term) of the day, in terms of development, was to maintain and strengthen the continuous professional expansion and knowledge of opticians. Moreover, the purpose of the day itself was to offer the currently working opticians the possibility to bring their existing information up to date and gain more knowledge about the current subjects related to optometry. In addition, four specialists of optometry attended the day as lecturers. Furthermore, 142 opticians from all over Finland and many other people, working in the field of optometry, attended the day and presented their products and services.

Finally, in the end of the day all the attendants were asked to fill in a questionnaire considering their satisfaction. The feedback given, considering the lectures and the setup of the event, were both rather positive and supportive. Furthermore, the day was very successful and all the attendants, who filled in the questionnaires, were very willing to participate in such an event also in the future. By and large, it would be important to organize that kind of educational days also in Northern Finland since most of the optometry’s educational days are focused on Southern Finland.