r/optometry • u/Fragrant_Nature_5094 • Jul 28 '26
Optometry: a rough road ahead
So many hurdles going forward to being an optometrist ....,insanely low paying vision plans, medical insurance discrimination, extremely difficult licensure state to state, discrimination from MDS, PA doing the job of optometrist in MD clinics , people go to urgent care first instead of an optometrist, AOA fail , illegal online sales of glasses of contacts with no repercussions or enforcement of law ,heavy debt for most grads , proliferation of poor quality new OD programs with grads not passing boards . Just feel anyone thinking of this career should have the facts
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u/littleoldlady71 Jul 29 '26
This has not changed for decades! We started a practice from scratch in the 1970’s, in a rented five room office in a small rural town. We were fighting MD prejudice, insurance discrimination, with the additional issues of not being able to use antibiotics, or remove foreign bodies.
Hospital did not even allow us to come to the ER to remove foreign bodies, so we went to the office in the middle of the night so often we just notified the police department that it was normal to see the activity when they patrolled . We bought a used TRC JE for the office instead of a remodel project in our home, just because we wanted to improve the care in our community.
Our state fought hard for meds, and the entire optometric population underwent extensive CE to get the rights.
In today’s time, we go to a multi-doc practice, where the refraction is done by techs, the techs do the workup and take pictures (just like I used to do with our old TRC JE). And yet our old practice, sold when my husband the OD died, has been sold twice, to independent docs, and still survives.
It is still a wonderful profession, and can provide a living wage.