A taste of indigenous eyecare in Central Australia left Flinders graduate ALEX COFFEY-OATES wanting more. It prompted her to set up her own small business, affording her the flexibility to work as she chooses.
Being on the same outback flight as a patient she referred to Darwin for urgent care stands out as one of the sliding doors moments in optometrist Ms Alex Coffey-Oates career.
Originally from Sydney, Coffey-Oates started studying biomedical science in New Zealand while on a working holiday before moving back to Australia where she completed a Master of Optometry at Flinders. While studying at Flinders, Coffey-Oates joined Specsavers in Norwood as a dispenser, then stayed for a further three years as an optometrist once she graduated.
Alex Coffey-Oates.
“Working in outreach communities certainly has its challenges. It’s very different to normal clinic life; there are no appointments.”
The team and her experience while working at Specsavers Norwood helped to set her up with the skills, contacts and expertise to pursue her passion and set up her own small business, Allied Eyes, a locum optometry service specialising in rural and remote eyecare.
Several moments have led to this point in her career, but one in particular stands out.
“There was a case in Arnhem Land where a patient with diabetes needed urgent care. He and one of his family members ended up on the same flight as me when I went back to Darwin. He was on the urgent flight to get to an ophthalmology appointment in Darwin to have laser treatment and intravitreal injections for diabetic retinopathy. That was a memorable, human moment,” Coffey-Oates says.
“It really showed the importance of having these visiting optometry services. If we had not been on that scheduled visit, this patient would very likely have ended up with extremely poor vision for the rest of his life. A lot of people think we go to these communities just to hand out glasses, however there are countless vision saving moments we encounter. These moments can feel like true ‘right time, right place’ moments. In remote and very remote communities, those moments feel like they matter even more as our patients have no other options for eyecare without travelling enormous distances and being met with significant barriers – cultural, physical, emotional.”
Alex Coffey-Oates, and her husband Liam, in South East Queensland picking up their new home/camper trailer.
By her own admission, Coffey-Oates has always wanted to work in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander eye health, and has been looking for opportunities to be involved, in addition to her full-time role at Specsavers.
“In 2022, Brien Holden Foundation and another organisation, called Community Eyecare, reached out to me to organise trips to Indigenous communities. It was additional work that I was doing on top of my full-time position at Specsavers. I loved it. It gave me an insight into how much work was available in that field. That then made me decide to shift away from my full-time role at Specsavers to make room for more of that type of work.”
Coffey-Oates’ involvement with Brien Holden Foundation and Community Eyecare stems back to her time at university.
“I got a scholarship during my final year at Flinders University to complete a placement with Brien Holden Foundation alongside their optometrist/NT clinic manager, Sarah Nicholls. We kept in touch. Sarah reached out again when she heard I was going to be in Darwin last year for the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Eye Health Conference (as announced by Optometry Australia due to me receiving a bursary to attend this event),” she explains.
“Ben Hamlyn, optometrist and owner of Community Eyecare and a previous lecturer of mine, requested expressions of interest to provide outreach optometry service in SA via an online group of optometrists. He allowed me to join him for one of his trips to Pika Wiya Health Service in Port Augusta and then I began doing trips to APY Lands.”
Room in Ramingining Community Health Service (Arnhem Land, NT) setup for delivering optometry clinics.
While joining organisations like Brien Holden Foundation as a full-time employee was an option, to give herself maximum control over where she worked and when, Coffey-Oates decided to establish her own small business, Allied Eyes, leveraging self-employment lessons from her parent’s family-owned small business, while picking up additional work as a locum within Specsavers.
“I started the business in April 2022 as I was beginning to do some outreach work in Aboriginal communities, including APY Lands and Arnhem Land at the time. I wanted to achieve greater flexibility in my work schedule to facilitate travel and work in remote communities,” she says.
“In the coming months, I will be providing services to regional corporate practices and to remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia. I plan to travel around the country and continue to provide eyecare to remote communities, as well as regional optometry clinics,” she says.
Although she hasn’t yet set up a business website for Allied Eyes, she is promoting her new business on social media and through word of mouth.
“A lot of people have reached out to me since I posted on LinkedIn that I’ve established Allied Eyes. My plan is to have a website that includes my availability so clinics can potentially book me,” she says.
“I bring all of my handheld equipment with me, the most important of which are my direct ophthalmoscope, binocular indirect ophthalmoscope, retinoscopy racks, 90D lens, diagnostic drops, and foreign body kit. Most clinics I attended have a slit lamp biomicroscope on site, for others the organisation I am working with brings one along with us.”
Gaining more experience each time she visits, Coffey-Oates is familiar with the ebb and flow of life in outreach communities.
“A lot of the focus in Indigenous communities is on screening for diabetic eye disease and dispensing basic glasses that make a huge difference to the people up there. Working in outreach communities certainly has its challenges. It’s very different to normal clinic life; there are no appointments – people just come into the clinic, or you drive around and find patients wherever, and see them. It’s very variable,” she says.
Coffey-Oates intends to share her clinical and travel experience on social media too, including the locations she visits, and interesting cases she encounters in the field.
“I plan to document these opportunities through social media to try to encourage more optometrists to travel further out from the big cities and provide quality eyecare in these under serviced areas,” she says.
“I think there’s a big cultural shift happening in our generation in regard to work culture, with a much bigger focus on doing what you love and are passionate about, and creating a better work/life balance. For me, the best way to achieve this was to start my own locuming business where I am in full control of when and where I work.”
She continues: “I think a lot of people want flexible working arrangements where they can pursue other interests. They might be interested in working somewhere else for a few months, then returning to their regular role. The whole idea of part-time work being more of a standard rather than working full-time for your whole career.”
In coming months, Coffey-Oates and her husband, a physiotherapist, are planning to travel around Australia, combined with short bursts of work.
“For the next few months, I’ll be based in South Australia doing locum work in Central Australia, and then we’re heading off in June on a trip around the country. We’ll both locum along the way, and I’ll still fly into Central Australia for the Aboriginal community work,” Coffey-Oates says.
To keep informed of work available in Central Australia, Coffey-Oates stays in touch with Brien Holden Foundation and Community Eyecare.
“Brien Holden Foundation normally send out a list of dates they’re visiting outback communities and Community Eyecare have a spreadsheet; I add my name when I’m available, and they arrange the rest,” she says.
“It’s about getting that flexibility for myself to be able to do more of what I want to do. I want to have a mix of remote work, as well as rural or township-based work.”
Thoughtful design, comfort and innovation are hallmark features of eyewear that captivate and retain customer loyalty. Danish brand ProDesign embodies...
