A New Life:Helga Hartmann may have taken the long way around to work for the family business but it was worth it, writes Brian O'Connell.
In some people's eyes, Helga Hartmann is a glutton for punishment. While many would come out the other side of an arduous four-year degree vowing never to sit in a study room again, Hartmann took the opposite view, albeit almost entirely by accident.
Barely two years into her chosen profession Hartmann decided a change was needed, and although she eventually entered the family business, the mind change owed more to coincidence than carefully thought-out career planning.
Her story begins in secondary school and growing up in a family steeped in healthcare work. Her father and grandfather worked as optometrists in a successful family practice, her sister is a radiographer, and her brother is Gerard Hartmann, the renowned physical therapist.
So, given the family lineage, it's not surprising to learn that the sciences played a large part in Hartmann's schooling. "I guess ever since secondary I knew I wanted to work in some area of healthcare. Given the family involvement, it was always very much part of my life, and just seemed to be the main choice. I was never interested in teaching or anything like that. Healthcare was my main subject of interest."
The Hartmann family practice has been based in Limerick for more than a century, sharpening the vision of generations of locals. However, Hartmann didn't take to working in the premises as a teenager; her time was spent studying at the unapologetically academic Laurel Hill Secondary School.
"I went to an all-Irish secondary school, which was a wonderful school with a very strong academic focus. I didn't find the Leaving Cert that stressful to be honest. Originally I thought I would do psychology - it would have been my first choice on my CAO form. I also had an interest in speech therapy. All the time though I never had a part-time job, it was study all the way."
Hartmann began to consider her options. As part of this, she visited St Camillus Hospital in Limerick where the staff gave her a taste of life as an occupational therapist.
"What I saw there was amazing - staff having a direct influence on people's lives. I spent a bit of time there observing what they did and I guess it stuck with me."
The positive experience in St Camillus led Hartmann to Trinity College Dublin in 1993 and the start of a four-year degree in occupational therapy.
"It was my first time away from home and I have to say I loved it. Trinity was a fantastic place to attend, and I got a wonderful all-round experience. I became involved in the rowing club, which gave me a really diverse circle of friends from the different arenas of the academic world."
The course itself, while academically demanding, suited Hartmann's broad interest in science, taking in subjects such as physics, physiology and statistics. She graduated with a 2:1 degree, and began applying for work positions.
Her first post was at St Mary's Hospital in the Phoenix Park, working in the area of stroke rehabilitation.
"Your workload as an occupational therapist is so diverse that there's no such thing as a typical working day. The mainstay of the work is general physical rehabilitation, which can also include rehab with patients post stroke or home visits to assess someone's home environment. The positives for me were dealing one on one with patients and trying to make a difference to someone's life. I didn't really see any negatives. On a whole the experience was very positive."
Two years into her career, the travel bug bit, and Hartmann decided to take a year out in Australia. On her return, she moved back to Limerick. The family practice was soon to be short staffed, due to a family member going on maternity leave. Hartmann was asked if she would step in as temporary cover.
"My sister was expecting a baby, so I was asked to step in for a few months. At the time it suited me, I had been away and was delighted to come home and see the family and also help out. As far as I was concerned though it was for six months."
Yet soon after beginning in the family business, Hartmann found she had an appetite for the work.
"I saw my dad and the love he had for his work and I found I had a profound interest in the occupation also. My dad was a great mentor, and it was his application more so than having a family business that inspired me to start thinking about a career change. No one ever asked me to do it, it was all my own choosing."
Having reset her sights on becoming an optometrist, Hartmann applied for a four-year degree course as a mature student at DIT in optometry. It would mean a return to life without a regular salary as well as a huge time commitment, yet she was certain she had finally found her chosen career.
"I'm very determined. Once I have an idea in my mind and am quite sure about it, I usually take action. At the end of the day I was the one to have to put my life on hold for four years. It was very challenging. I had to study subjects such as physics and chemistry which I hadn't done for years."
Yet returning to college as a mature student with some life experience behind her, Hartmann found herself better able to cope with the challenges she met. "I was very focused and would turn up for all my lectures. It was a nine-to-five job really, and I came out of it with a first class honours degree. I was the type of person who wanted to know everything within the course."
With her degree under her arm, and now a trained optometrist, Hartmann returned to Limerick and the family business. "I was delighted to be able to work in a long-established business like ours. We opened in 1870 or so, and we are now the fourth generation in business and the third generation in optometry. It's a real privilege to carry on that tradition. We've had families coming to us as patients for a very long time. Some people can tell us that their grandparents would have come to us."
Hartmann's typical working day is run by appointments, generally examining a different patient every half hour while the work involves assessing the visual needs of each client. Based on her assessment, patients can then be fitted with contact lenses, glasses or referred to a specialist if need be.
Patients can range in age from six months to 90 years old and, she says, much like her previous career, the one-on-one contact is important to her.
"The occupational therapy has come in handy, in that it gave me a wonderful foundation in general health knowledge. I am then able to look at patients from a holistic approach, not just their eyes and glasses, but them as a whole person and assess their visual needs within that complex system."
The key to working with family she says is to have a family you get on with first and foremost. For anyone out there considering an academic or professional change, she offers the following advice: "I would say go for it. I'm lucky I had a supportive family who could put me through college, so that I just had to think about study and didn't have the financial strain.
"Making the right choices is so important in life and with work, I figured I would be spending eight hours a day for over 30 years at something. It's important that you really like what you do, and thankfully I do."