Is working in an optometry practice good experience?

[dadnicetomeetyouhungry]

The area I'm in doesn't have a lot of available jobs right now because, you know, summer. I did get an interview to scribe and perform workups for an optometrist, but I'm aware that this is different from working at an ophthalmology practice. Would DO (and/or MD) schools like this job or not? Sounds like I'd have the opportunity to interact with patients and would be expanding my knowledge of medical billing/coding, so my thought is that I could make it look good on my app, but just wanted to get a second opinion.

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[Isoval]

The general rule of thumb is that you should really only be working where you intend to work in the future (with regard to clinical experience).

In other words, this is not a good clinical experience.

If you think it would be a good experience for you personally, I would do it. But do not rely on this to be a core clinical experience for you.

 

[Medic741]

I’d take the job for the money, the experience wouldn’t be helpful on an app imo anymore than the maturity having an actual job shows.

Will need other clinical experiences through some other venue.

 

[Cornfed101]

I work in a practice with both optometrists and ophthalmologists and I agree with the above posters. You need to show that you want to be a physician, but it’s good experience for becoming comfortable around patients. The main difference between the two - for someone working up the patients, like you would be - is the optometrists mostly work with healthy people and ophthalmologists work with a lot more sick people (eye pathologies). While that is definitely not a hard and fast rule, that is the pattern I have recognized.

 

[DO2015CA]

i have a different mind about it. Paramedics, CNAs, and RTs are all different professions that deal with a lot of patient care. No one would say that you shouldn’t talk about those experiences in your application. I think working for an optometrist would fall under the category of allied health. I don’t think you should center your application around it but instead acknowledge it’s a different field then you can talk about what you learned from it patient care wise. I’d list it as a job experience and then if asked about patient care experience then you can mention it. Of course it’s not going to be your only patient care experience because you will have volunteering and whatnot.