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Optometry: The Emergent Profession in America and the World
Until recently, optometrists were considered good for just one thing: prescribing glasses for the visually impaired. Today, optometry is a health profession that has come of age and plays an ever increasing and vital role in primary eye care.
 The ascendancy of optometry as a profession owes its success to rigorous and demanding training in American optometric colleges and universities, modem technological advances that contributing to the expansion of the scope of practice of optometry, and the burgeoning awareness that optometry is at the vanguard of primary eye care. But the full range of optometric practice is not yet fully known by the general public. This, however, is about to change as health maintenance institutions particularly in Asia, Europe and Latin America are discovering the clinical competence and the financial benefits optometric care offers the world's expanding and aging population.
The Profession
Today's optometrists examine, diagnose, treat and manage diseases of the eye. In addition to providing treatments such as contact lenses, corrective and low vision devices, optometrists today are authorised to use diagnostic and therapeutic pharmaceutical agents to treat anterior segment disease, glaucoma and ocular hypertension. As primary eye care practitioners, optometrists often are the first to detect such potentially serious conditions as diabetes, hypertension and arteriosclerosis. In fact, today optometrists work closely with ophthalmologists, neurologists, psychologists and other health care practitioners. Except for invasive procedures, the line between optometry and ophthalmology has become increasingly blurred; the two profession, are gradually developing a symbiotic if not sympathetic relationship.
As with medicine, optometry offers a variety of areas of specialisation. Practitioner, wishing to focus in areas other than general practice may select such specialities as contact lenses, vision therapy and orthoptics, paediatrics, low vision, sports, vision, head trauma, learning disabilities, and occupational vision. Optometrists may and often concentrate on one or two specialty areas of optometry.
The Student
Students who apply to American optometric schools are normally graduates of four year colleges. There are programme, that accept students after three years of college, but generally these are special cases and would not apply to international students. Applicants are typically science majors, with a background in biology, chemistry, physics and, to a lesser degree, psychology. Most applicants have a high grade point average and Optometry Aptitude Test scores of at least 320 in all OAT categories. In addition, most applicants have worked or spent significant time in optometrist's offices. Increasingly, applicants have also participated in community social programmes.
When asked about the factors influencing career choices, a significant number of optometry school applicants indicate that medicine had been their first choice. But exposure to the medical field and to the lives of physicians and their families altered their views, leading them to select optometry as their profession of choice. A close patient-optometrist relationship; work schedule flexibility, particularly for women interested in raising families; increased community respect for the profession, and the personable, painless interaction between patient and optometrist were other factors that swayed talented students away from other health maintenance professions and into optometry.
The Colleges
There are 16 schools of optometry in the continental United States, one in Puerto Rico and two in Canada. The optometry schools in the United States are: The University of Alabama at Birmingham; Southern California College of Optometry (Fullerton, California); University of California at Berkeley; Nova Southeastern University College of Optometry (Ft. Lauderdale, Florida); Illinois College of Optometry (Chicago, Illinois); Indiana University School of Optometry (Bloomington, Indiana); The New England College of Optometry (Boston, Massachusetts); Michigan College of Optometry at Ferris State University; University Of Missouri School of Optometry (St. Louis, Missouri); State College of Optometry, State University of New York (New York, New York); Northeastern State University College of Optometry (Tahlequah, Oklahoma); Pacific University College of Optometry (Forest Grove, Oregon); Pennsylvania College of Optometry (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania); Southern College of Optometry (Memphis, Tennessee); College of Optometry, University of Houston (Houston, Texas); Inter-American University of Puerto Rico School of Optometry (San Juan, Puerto Rico), and The Ohio State University College of Optometry.
Admissions Requirements
While there are minor differences in admissions requirements among optometry schools, only student with a good college academic record, an undergraduate degree in the sciences, some exposure to optometry and a people-oriented personality can expect admittance to optometry schools. In addition, applicants undergo an admissions interview that includes personality, interpersonal skills, leadership, motivation and communication and written skills evaluations.
Admissions applications need to be submitted as early as 12 months before the applicant is to begin the first academic year, and required course work must be completed by the time of the applicant’s interview with the admissions committee (interviews occur six months prior to the beginning of the first academic term).
The Curriculum
It takes four years to complete the work leading to a Doctor of Optometry degree. The first two years focus on classroom and laboratory work in the basic sciences, with emphasis on human anatomy and physiology, visual anatomy and physiology, biochemistry, pharmacology, systemic diseases, and geometric and ophthalmic optics. Patient contact in some institutions begins at the end of the second year, but more often at the beginning of the third year. At this time students develop primary care diagnostic and management skills under the supervision of faculty members. Fourth year students are involved in full-time patient care and may select externships, either within the college's clinics or at affiliated sites in the country or abroad.
Some optometry colleges offer overseas trained health professionals (generally ophthalmologists) programmes designed to increase their knowledge and skills in optometric sciences and practice but without issuing an OD degree.
The Practice
Most optometrists are self employed, practicing alone or in group practices. Some practice with other health care professionals in multidisciplinary settings, in the military, in public health, in hospitals, in teaching institutions and in the ophthalmic industry. Subject to few emergency calls, independent work schedules, and convivial and agreeable doctor patient relationships, optometry offers one of those rare opportunities in today's health care professions where the practitioner finds fulfillment both in his work and his personal life.
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