Proudly independent, offering full-service eye health care, Brennan & Smith Optometrists have been serving the New England North West since 1988.
Business founder, optometrist Mark Smith, with fellow University of NSW Sydney graduate optometrists Kate Darley, Trent Irwin, and Mark St Ledger, are on call to provide a full suite of optical support in four locations. Each, along with Althea Lean, who has a special interest in contact lenses, rotate across the Brennan and Smith footprint of Armidale, Inverell, Tenterfield, and Glen Innes.
Kate has been with Brennan & Smith for nearly a decade, and felt the business stands apart because all four optometrists drive their service model by responding to the needs in their communities.
“Every decision that’s made, we choose. So, there’s no one in a head office that tells us what we can and can’t do.”
“The decisions are made by the four of us in how we choose to do what we do,” Kate said.
“Our priority is being independent, providing the best health services that we can for rural and regional areas.”
The team and staff provide unbiased, professional service and eye health expertise, knowledge, and opinions unique to each person. Shops carrying a wide, contemporary range of frame styles in eye and sunglasses at budget packages and high-end brands such as Prada, Jimmy Choo, and Gucci, and a wide range of optical accessories.
Every frame and product in the store is hand-selected.
Store staff are trained and well-versed in the brands and styles, and most are dispensary-trained to provide advice on different lens prescriptions and lens types to suit different frames and can easily source alternate options for every preference.
The ability to make choices based on the country-based customers they see every day means a lot to Kate.
“I’m born and bred rural, so I’m from a smaller town, than these that I work in, so I always wanted to come back and work rurally. That was important to me, she said.
“And giving people choice, and being independent just means you know that you’re getting that decision from the expert seeing you that day.”
They also provide outreach to centres without shops, such as the Uralla, Walcha, Bundarra and Guyra nursing homes, and other little towns without services.
Though people are greeted by walls of frames, Brennan & Smith’s care and service reaches far beyond choosing a new pair of glasses.
Brennan and Smith are constantly adding key equipment at each site to give customers the best of the current technology for accurate and immediate results, with equipment like optical coherence tomography in each store to check for diabetes, glaucoma or macula degeneration.
“Which means, even if you live in Tenterfield, you don’t have to travel to Armidale to have a test,” Kate said.
Three of the partners are therapeutically endorsed, meaning they can co-manage medical conditions and prescribe necessary medications for specific eye conditions, such as glaucoma, sore eyes, or diabetes.
Brennan and Smith run a dry-eye clinic with IPL (Intense Pulsated Light), and the CASA pilot’s qualification test. Kate is Advanced Paediatric Eye Care qualified and works with infants and children.
“Watching little kids put on glasses for the first time, it’s just amazing,” Kate said.
Staff are also trained to interpret the meaning behind callers with potentially dangerous symptoms, such as flashes and floaters, indicating a retinal detachment and they prioritise emergency appointments.
Other traumas, such as metal fragments in the eye, or eye injuries are routinely seen by Brennan & Smith optometrists. They can also pick up evidence of strokes and patients can move forward to specialist care or visit their local office to track their recovery.
Kate said their independence allows them to source the lenses they use from more than one supplier for the benefit of their customers, unlike franchised optometrists.
“We have a preferred lens company, because you can’t be across them all, all the time,” she explained.
“However, if someone comes in and we think their glasses will be cheaper with another company, or they’re going to do a better job, or they’re going to get a thinner lens, we go to wherever is best.”
Kate said besides tailoring the business to respond to local need, they also support local groups and initiatives to give back to the communities where they live and work.
“We try to support, even in a small way, lots of different groups,” she said.
“And because we’re in the four towns, that covers a really big area as well.”
You can learn more about Brennan & Smith at brennanandsmith.com.au.
Brennan and Smith was voted by New England Times readers as the Best Optometrist in the New England 2024.
See the other winners and more details about this promotion.