A prescription for both glasses and contact lenses must include:
- the prescriber’s name, practice address, professional delegation and registration number, telephone number and signature,
- patient’s name,
- the date of the eye exam,
- the expiry date; and
- details used by a regulated professional to dispense eyeglasses, contact lenses or a subnormal vision device to provide the required vision correction for the patient.
A prescription will also include the power of each lens based on your specific condition: nearsightedness (myopia), farsightedness (hyperopia), blurred vision (astigmatism), or age-related need for reading glasses (presbyopia), prism and add/boost range (binocular vision related conditions) and myopia management.
Contact lens prescriptions will include information about a specific brand, design, material, size, diameter or curvature of the lens dependent on the patient’s comfort and condition.
If the parameters of the prescription are not available, it is the responsibility of the dispenser to contact the prescribing optometrist to determine if other parameters are acceptable.