What Ten+ Years in Derby Actually Looks Like
Richard Petrie Optometrists has been part of the fabric of Derby since 1978. Davina Dosanjh took ownership twelve years ago and has spent over a decade since building a clinical offer that goes far beyond anything the high street multiples would attempt — dry eye clinics, myopia management, audiology, advanced imaging — all within an independent practice already established when she arrived. We asked her three questions about what that journey has looked like.
What did taking over an established independent look like — and what has shaped it into what it is today?
"I took over an existing independent practice, and the freedom and autonomy to have choice in how I do things and to be able to implement new services or ways of doing things is important for me."
You've built a clinical offer that most practices can't match. How do you think about expanding services as an independent — and what does that depth give your patients that a corporate model simply can't?
"High-quality bespoke lenses and frames are something we can offer that corporates cannot. We have also created time and space to be able to specialise and run services such as dry eye consultation, which generally doesn't involve selling frames — we value our chair time and charge for this, which isn't usually related in a corporate or multiple business model."
What would you say to an optometrist or dispensing optician who is seriously thinking about going independent or taking on their own practice right now?
"For anyone thinking about it, I'd say going independent can be fun and a purposeful project which needs dedication, adaptability and attention and can be extremely rewarding. It can also be hard work and tough at times — build a network and use the resources you have within your networks for support. Keep learning and exploring new ideas, and be adaptable."
What Ten+ Years in Derby Actually Looks Like
Read back through what Davina has said and notice the word she keeps returning to. Freedom. Not profit margins. Not patient volumes. Not competitive positioning. Freedom. The freedom to create chair time that is not tied to frame sales. The freedom to charge for clinical expertise that deserves to be charged for. The freedom to build a practice around what patients actually need rather than what a corporate model will accommodate.
Dry eye consultation is a useful example. It is a clinical service that a motivated independent can run extraordinarily well — and almost no one will touch it, precisely because it is not built around a transaction. You cannot bolt dry eye management onto a 20-minute corporate appointment slot and a frame conversion target. You need time, clinical depth, and the willingness to value your chair independently of what leaves on the patient's face. Davina built that. Deliberately.
The audiology offer tells a similar story. So does the advanced imaging. These are not vanity services bolted on for differentiation. They are what happens when a clinician has the autonomy to ask: what does this patient actually need, and am I able to provide it? Inside an independent practice, that question gets a proper answer. Inside a multiple, it is often not even asked.
What Davina has built at Richard Petrie Optometrists is not an unusual story. It is a repeatable one: an established practice, a new owner with clinical ambition, a decade of quiet, determined building. Derby is better served for it. The patients walking in for dry eye clinics, myopia management, and advanced imaging are not going anywhere else because there is no local practice offering what this practice does. That is not an accident. That is what independence, when properly deployed, actually produces.
If their story sounds like the one you want to build, Go, Independent is where to start.
