Drawing Attention to the Optometry Career

We are often being asked by patients, parents, students, or even teachers about the Optometry profession as a career and what academic path leads to becoming an Optometrist. Before I start giving answers I usually ask them, what do they know about the three O’s of eye care. The three O’s as we all know are Ophthalmologists, Optometrists, and Opticians. I make sure that they understand and know that each of the three eye care professionals provides a different level of care. Almost always I conclude that they never knew about the differences when they inquired.
What is disappointing about all of this is that even universities that teach Optometry rarely talk to potential students or parents about Optometry as a career path. If you ask Optometrists and Optometry students when did they first learn about the profession they will most probably answer when they first visited an Optometrist. Therefore, if it did not happen to visit an Optometrist before the age of college – and that is the case of most students in developing countries, who rarely visit an eye doctor unless in the presence of symptoms- students would rarely know about the Optometry degree.
Some of the differences that I underline include:
Optometrists attend Optometry school and not medical school.
Optometry is not a new profession, in fact, the term Optometry appeared in the book “Treatise on the Eye: The Manner and Phenomena of Vision” which was written in 1759 by physician William Porterfield.
Optometrists don’t do surgeries, they provide pre and postoperative care to patients going through eye surgery.
The fun part of Optometry is that it is a vigorous and challenging career continually being disrupted with new technologies and offering unlimited opportunities.
Independent Optometrists have tremendous work flexibility. They manage their schedule in a way they can have enough time to travel for conferences and continuous development.
Even though patients connect with Optometrists who chose to become professional or private practitioners, but Optometrists have many job profiles that include professors, optometry researchers, vision consultants in the eye care industry, public health, and government service, career in sports vision, or community health centers.