Do you support Optometrists doing surgery? - ODs allowed to do scalpel surgery in OK!

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Do you support Optometrists doing surgery?

  • Absolutely No: MD/DO/medical student

    Votes: 823 58.8%
  • Absolutely No: Optometrist/Optometry student

    Votes: 39 2.8%
  • Absolutely No: All others

    Votes: 147 10.5%
  • Yes w/ proper optometry "surgical fellowships": MD/DO/medical student

    Votes: 115 8.2%
  • Yes w/ proper optometry "surgical fellowships": Optometrist/Optometry student

    Votes: 107 7.6%
  • Yes w/ proper optometry "surgical fellowships": All others

    Votes: 61 4.4%
  • Absolutely Yes: MD/DO/medical student

    Votes: 13 0.9%
  • Absolutely Yes: Optometrist/Optometry student

    Votes: 27 1.9%
  • Absolutely Yes: All others

    Votes: 22 1.6%
  • Undecided

    Votes: 46 3.3%

  • Total voters
    1,400
No, absolutely not. I don't support optometrists doing any type of surgery. I even have my doubts that optometry should exist at all. As opthalmologist I could prescribe glasses and contact lenses. And going out of topic a little bit I think that a better solution to the shortage of ophthalmologists in underserved areas could be better solved by allowing foreign medical graduates ophthalmologists to practice after passing some knowledge and skills tests.

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"for anyone who doesnt know:
I begin optometry school this year and I cant wait to begin!

I really hope that by the time I finish, OD's and MD's would be able to work WITH each other and not AGAINST each other..... :thumbup:"

Tony,

Sweetie, I've been an OD for 20 years. That is not going to happen.

This may be hard to believe, but I actually wanted to be an OD from the age of 16 and I never even applied to medical school.

The Optometry I wanted to practice is fading away and the profession has lost its identity. I never wanted to treat glaucoma. I never wanted to deal with blood or pus, but there are forces in this profession turning the ship in that direction.

The MD's SHOULD be concerned because we are NOT adequately trained in hemostasis or anatomy or physiology. Maybe some schools are ... but there is not a great consistency in optometry curriculum across the US. We are also not adequately trained in how to handle emergencies that invariably can happen during any surgical procedure.

I want to change professions. I'm tired and bored with optometry. The problem is, that no matter how smart you are, even if you have a near-photographic memory and an IQ over 145, if you're an OD you're regarded by everyone, even PAs and nurses, as a professional dumb*ss. A lot of patients perceive OD's in the same manner. We're ineffective as healthcare providers if patients and other health professionals see us as having no credibility. At this point, I don't know if I want to go into another health profession. I might like to become a registered dietitian ... but that would involve healthcare again. Maybe computer science or something in math.

Anyway, if you go into optometry, know that you'll have to prove yourself, over and over again to both the MDs and ODs, unless you go into academia and are published or known on the lecture circuit. That's because the OD degree doesn't mean much anymore.

Optometry's greatest threat right now is from two things: Technology and infighting. Ironically, you'd think the biggest bully on the block would be ophthalmology. It isn't. It's other optometrists. They're just awful, pretentious jerks, male and female alike. I do all my CE online so as to avoid talking to any of them. Technology is also fighting hard to replace us completely and you can peruse the optometry forum for detailed discussion on that.

Good luck with your career, Tony. Just don't go into this with rose-colored glasses. You may do just fine, and I truly hope that's the case.
 
To be honest with you, I do agree. I said earlier that I am going into optometry because I like primary care, and if I went to med school it would be for something like internal medicine, not surgery, and if somebody has a dream of being an ocular surgeon and they are debating between going to med or optometry school, they should obviously go to med school. However, sometimes people do get their OD and then decide that they made a bad decision, and paying another 130k in tuition and taking another biochem class as an M1 that they already took as an O1 seems counterintuitive. DOs do allopathic residencies, so it doesn't seem like too much of a stretch (in my mind) for an OD to do a comprehensive ocular surgery residency, but I understand that ophthalmologists want to preserve their profession as well.

The difference here is that DOs undergo the same training as MDs (except as an OMS, we learn OMM). We even have to take the same boards (USMLE) to get into allopathic residencies. The residency programs are merging anyway, so there are no more allopathic/osteopathic distinctions in residency training.
If ODs wanted to take the USMLE, I would be more okay with them getting residency training, but it requires a lot of knowledge that, based on my understanding, you wouldn't get in optometry school.
 
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