Optometry Profession Overview

What Is an Optometrist?

Doctors of optometry (O.D.s/optometrists), America’s primary eye health care providers, are the frontline of eye and vision care. Doctors of optometry are essential health care providers and are recognized as physicians under Medicare. They examine, diagnose, treat and manage diseases and disorders of the eye. In addition to providing eye and vision care, they play a major role in an individual’s overall health and well-being by detecting systemic diseases, and diagnosing, treating and managing ocular manifestations of those diseases, and providing vaccinations.

Doctors of optometry:

• Prescribe medications, low vision rehabilitation, vision therapy, spectacle lenses, contact lenses and perform certain surgical procedures.
• Counsel patients regarding surgical and non-surgical options that meet their visual needs related to their occupations, avocations and lifestyle.
• Complete pre-professional undergraduate education in a college or university and four years of professional education at a college of optometry, leading to the doctor of optometry (O.D.) degree. Many doctors of optometry complete an additional residency in a specific area of practice.

From (https://www.aoa.org/healthy-eyes/whats-a-doctor-of-optometry?sso=y) 

 

In What Modes Do Optometrists Practice?

Optometrists practice in many different kinds of situations and with different types of employers.

• Individual Private Practice
• Partnership or Group Practice
• Retail/Optical Settings
• Optometric/Opthalmologic Professional Settings
• Military/Public Health
• Inderdisciplinary Care
• Acaemic/Research
• Corporate/Industrial
• Consultants

From (https://optometriceducation.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/12/careerguide-november-2022-v2.pdf) 

 

Would I Make a Good Optometrist?

To provide guidance to those considering optometry as a profession, the Association of Schools and Colleges of Optometry (ASCO) has established functional guidelines for optometric education. The ability to meet these guidelines, along with other criteria established by individual optometric institutions, is necessary for graduation from an optometric professional degree program.  The functional guidelines in optometric education require that the candidate/student possess appropriate abilities in the following areas: 1) observation 2) communication 3) sensory and motor coordination 4) intellectual: conceptual, integrative and quantitative abilities and 5) behavioral and social attributes.

From (https://optometriceducation.org/future-students/resources/functional-guidelines/)