Marley,
Come on, get real! The amount of general medical knowledge taught in optometry school is no where near what the MD students get! Last time I checked, OD's did not do 2 years of clinical rotations in medicine, surgery, pediatrics and other subspecialties! And to become an OD does not require one year of internship training, which OMD's complete in either surgery or medicine.
To say that our educations are similar is a sad, sad, misinterpretation of the situation, and it is you who should be ashamed of opening your mouth without a grasp of the facts. Hell, as you suggest, RN's are as qualified to do "invasive" procedures as MD's. That may be completely true, but as an RN, if the patient dies because that procedure was a bad idea, you won't be held responsible. I am tired, tired, tired, tired, tired, of hearing everybody on this planet with some small degree of medical training think that they know everything, and can do everything in medicine. A little knowledge is dangerous, and the more you learn, the more you find out what you don't know. That's probably why every EMT and RN think they know everything while every first year resident is scared to death of killing someone.
You should truly be commended on the dedication it takes to act as an RN. It's a job not many people could do. However, and I don't care how many NG tubes of other "invasive" procedures you may have performed, you are in no way of the equivalent training of an MD. And you never, never, ever, will be until you go through medical school. I almost wish there was a way for all of you people who think your training is just as rigorous and thorough to take our boards and see just how you measure up.
I am not trying to be holier-than-thou or advocate that I'm so intelligent or anything. But to say that the OD's training is similar to the MD's is ridiculous. And it's even more than ridiculous - laughable - sad, perhaps, that you could even begin to equate the so called "invasive" procedures an RN undertakes to anything in the realm of ocular surgery. (I suppose IV's, foley's and NG's are equivalent to digging into someone's eye with a keratome that could destroy the cornea). Of course, being the intelligent person you are, you did attempt to compare toe nail clipping to laser surgery.
So go home all you allied health people!!!! I"m tired of hearing it. RN's, CRNP's, CRNA's, PA's, CRT's, whatever...all of you need to come to grips with the situation. You are all direly needed to make profession of health care keep ticking. But you are not of the equivalent training of the MD. And you should be content in the role that was originally set for your professions. 50 years of nursing or pa or whatever does not equal MD.
And as for us MD's being money grubbing and only wanting to reserve surgery for ourselves for the money...well hell man, what can I say. First off, once everybody with a degree and a legislative act allowing them to act like a physician gets into practice, why bother with med school? Maybe we should put it in these terms, since maybe it will hit closer to home....what if opticians suddenly were allowed to prescribe and dispense contact lenses and eyeglasses? Certainly you don't believe it takes 4 years of OD school to do this. Just as you believe the OMD's training is too extensive for their function, I'm sure others can take the place of the OD's. But of course, being the altruistic, money-hating OD that you are, you would not care if you lost half your business to opticians, right. I'm sure that your would see it as an excellent cost savings program and not complain one bit as your antithesis opticians open up shop and dole out prescriptions for a fourth of what an average OD visit would cost, right?
Finally, who will take care of the OD's complications? I'm sure the OMD's are going to be more than happy to take care of complications that come from OD surgery, especially seeing how no OMD in the country would rightly consider OD's qualified to do these operations.
But hey...I understand where you're coming from. You didn't goto med school for some reason, whether you didn't want the time investment, or you didn't gain acceptance, and now you want to find another way to do the work of a physician. I can understand that. Funny thing is, it's always PA's, CRNP's, and OD's citing physician greed as limiting their scope of practice, yet the greed of these very individuals causes them to extend their scope of practice beyond what is safe to patients. So who do you think is greedy? The notion has always been that physicians act in the role in which they currently act. It is the "allied" professions that seek to make their own gains.
