I know there are many young people out there aspiring to become an optometrist. Maybe your sight was bad until one day, like magic, an optometrist outfitted you with glasses and contact lenses and voila’, you saw great. Maybe you think optometrists make a good living and your primary goal is to make a good living with minimal stress and inconvenience to your family life.
Well…kill your romantic notions of what it means to be an optometrist and focus on getting a better job.
First of all, what is the image of an optometrist? Perhaps you think it is overwhelmingly positive. Perhaps all of the optometrists you know have, like a clown, a smile on their face and a funny joke to tell. Trust me, they are crying on the inside.
Speaking of a good joke, have you noticed that every optometrist joke is a bad one. By bad I mean dirty. Trust me, don’t do an internet search for eye doctor jokes unless you like vile, base, worse-than-locker-room jokes. The only two clean optometry jokes aren’t even funny.
Seriously, optometrists have a huge PR problem. When ever we’re mentioned, it’s disparaging. Dave Barry goes to the eye doctor and his devoted fans use the comment section to crack wise. People on the internet view you as worse than used car salesman because you try to convince/sell them on the best (and more expensive) contact lenses and eyewear technologies.
Where is the love for optometrists?! Why can’t people respect their eye health enough to be glad the optometrist wants to dilate their eyes?
Doctor, “Can we dilate your eyes today?”
Most Patients, “No, I’ve got stuff to do today, so I can’t be bothered by with making arrangements once every year (or two or five) to have my eyes dilated. Eye exams should be like haircuts, in-and-out. It’s not like this is healthcare or anything.”
And that’s the problem. People value healthcare, but they don’t recognize that eyecare belongs to healthcare. They’ll pay their primary care physician what it takes to manage their kid’s allergies, but for their kids’ myopia, they’ll go to the big box store instead of the private practice optometric physician. They’ll buy their kid uncoated lenses and a no-name frame which only serves to lower his/her self esteem and get their lunch money robbed.
When I was in undergrad, we had a lecture series for students going into health professions. The doctor told the assembly, “If you want to be a vet that’s fine, but animals don’t pay the bills. People do.”
His point was that when faced with a choice to do an expensive procedure on an animal, they’ll opt for the cheaper option of putting it down; however, humans will pay what it takes to stay alive. The same applies to being an optometrist. Go into a profession where people value your services instead of complaining about the cost. Which is funny because optometry offers the best value for the healthcare dollar (according to Williams Group).
So people value healthcare, but they don’t value eyecare. Which is crazy because eyecare IS part of healthcare. “Vision Insurance” is such a bad thing because it makes people think that their vision is somehow unrelated to their whole body medical care. All eye exams should be under medical insurance, even if their isn’t a “medical diagnosis.” People get routine physicals and check-ups all the time without a specific complaint. Why can’t we do eye exams and be reimbursed by medical insurance without a specific complaint other than making sure our eyes’ health is fine and getting an updated glasses Rx?
I’m sure the dentists don’t mind that they’re not usually under the umbrella of medical insurance coverage. They have nice high fees. People value having a great smile. When the dentist does a filling, does he ask you if you would like the worst, cheapest metal implanted in your teeth? When I went in for a check-up, the dentist handed me a tube of Flouride and said to use this. In my mailed bill, there was a charge of $7. Did I contest it, saying I can’t believe you would charge that amount of money! I could have gotten it on the internet for $5!
Heck no.
So why the grief with eyecare services and products? How come people aren’t willing to pay what it takes for quality eyecare and eyewear?
Probably because there aren’t any big box dentists…yet. But why would the dentist go for the big box. They make good money. Optometrists go to big box because the money is there, right then, cash up front. If I’m new out of school and go to work for another optometrist, I might expect to be paid $50,000. Commercial will offer me $70,000-80,000, or if I own the contract of a busy store, I’ll get $100K+. Why in the world wouldn’t a new grad do commercial? Seriously, the only other alternative worthy of consideration is the Indian Health Service working as a PHS commissioned corps officer. If you do that your entire career, the non-contributory retirement more than makes up for not being paid as high a salary in the early years. The only drawback is living in a remote area, but if you and your family are fine with it, then you’ve got it made. Plus, IHS optometrists get to do real eyecare, not just refractions. If you want to diagnose diabetes and leukemia by looking in people’s eyes, then you want IHS. If you want to wear out your fingers writing prescriptions for eye drops and oral meds, then IHS is for you. If you want a full month of paid vacation, then IHS is for you. The patients actually respect you because they know you take care of their eye problems.
People in the city with an acute eye problem go straight to the OMD. It never even crosses their mind to come see you, the optometrist. Besides, you, an optometrist, are not even on their list of providers to see for medical eyecare because their insurance won’t let you, an optometrist, on their panel.
If the only reason you wanted to be an optometrist is because you want good pay and easy hours, then you are wrong on both counts. Pharmacists get paid just as much, if not more, than most optometrists- and they don’t have to sell stuff. The patients come to them with exactly what they want. Optometrists have had to expand their hours to evenings and weekends. Big box optometrists started it, and private practice copies it to stay competitive.
Do yourself a favor and be a software engineer, pharmacist, or anything else. Optometrists’ lifestyle will only go downhill. You’ll end up working Saturdays and Sundays, and during the week you’ll have to work every day until 7 or 8 PM. The student loans are not worth it. Pharmacists have the same pay without the student loan debt of optometrists. So do salesman. Do something else for your own sanity. You’ll end up poor and bitter. In fact, become an ophthalmic products salesperson. They make as much as the optometrists, and you can sell anything to an optometrist. After all, he/she was duped into becoming an optometrist, so they’ll be easy scores for your over-priced products.
Maybe you have had some bad experiences, but the optical industry isn’t that bad. My soon to be wife is an optometrist and loves her job. I know that it is an uphill battle for recognition and people seem to regard eye-health as something foreign to health care proper. If it makes you feel any better, I value what you, as an optometrist, do.
Al
Ahhh…Thanks Al.
I would never go to an Optometrist when there are opthamologists available. They’ve actually been through medical school and would be able to deal with more issues than an Optometrist.
I don’t say that to be snarky, truly.
Nicole isn’t being snarky. She is just uninformed.
I’ll be a little snarky, though. Confusion exists among healthcare consumers regarding who to choose for an eyecare practitioner because of people like Nicole that share this attitude of “ophthalmologists are gods and optometrists are devils.” I’ve met some crummy OMDs and I’ve met some crummy ODs. It’s up to the individual eyecare doctor the level of service and the specialties they choose to practice.
Look at our optometry school curriculum and clinical training, and you will see that an optometrist is empowered to deal with any condition an ophthalmologist can…except the actual surgery. The OMD is just my scalpel. If he turns into my punt returner, then it’s my fault, not my training’s fault.
Someone posted a comment that I accidentally deleted when moderating. The comment was:
“Why so bitter?”
Umm…did you not even read the post?
I’m behind is catching this, but good post. I beg to differ on the student loan issue, though. The PharmD’s (pharmacists) coming out of school are looking at @ $60-80K student loan debt, $100K+ if out-of-state or private school (or even worse, if both). The hours in retail pharmacy (CVS, Walgreens) are just as crappy, too, with standing all day, high volume stress, and patients waiting in line giving you the evil eye if you should have to take a restroom break. Pharmacy in that setting is seen as a convenience, so people think all they need to do is just drop off and pick up and that it should be done lickety-split. Of course, the drive-thru windows that some pharmacies have now just add to the “Burger King Pharmacy” concept (“would you like fries with that”)? However, as with optometry, there are some niches out there that some pharmacists can get into without having to deal with all that headache.
I fully appreciate your value, though. My sister’s an optometrist so I understand.
I have to say that I agree with everything in the Dr Langford’s blog. Just about all healthcare workers, including Pharms AND Rn’s get paid more than OD’s.
Actually he was being nice about it. It is really worse than this in California, where it is IMPOSSIBLE to find work. Full time job with benefits-forget it.
I am working into another field at the moment because it is so bad.
Optometry school was a total waste of time and money.
Holy Cow! Well, I would blame the crazy, communist laws you have in California also. I prefer to live in the land of the free.
My 4th year of oppie school, I looked over the board requirements for getting an optometry license in the People’s Republic of California. The rules are petty and ridiculous. They don’t acknowledge the training that modern optometrists receive.
i was just doing some research on Optometry, cuz i though it was interesting…
hmmm….so many negative remarks…
Man, I wish I would have read this 4 years ago…
Check out
Optometrysucks on Yahoo discussion group
Please see my post entitled I Don’t Hate Optometry.
you sound like you need a hug Dave.
I TOTALLY AGREE WITH DAVID. I’m an optom here in the uk and people gasp in horror when asked to pay £20 for a full sight test which includes refraction, funduscopy and any further tests that may be necessary, yet they will happily go and have their hair done, or pay £50 to get their nails done.
They come to the optometrist once in a blue moon and you can see the idiots running up to the reception deskdemanding to know why the optom is running 5 mins late!!!!!
These ignorant people just do not value the importance of a sight test.
12 years after qualifyng my basic salary is EXACTLY the same as it was when i started (and no, it has not gone up with inflation, so if i was earning £xx back then, I’m STILL on that same amount but now, IM NOT EVEN GETTING ANY BONUS because bonus scheme has changed from the number of sight tests to sales.
Its shamefull, disgusting and i’m extremely embarassed when i tell my friends. They have all excelled and earned promotion in their line of work and chosen careers but me, i’m going backwards and earning alot less in real terms than I was when i started!!
its a bloody joke.
Here in the UK, the actual sight test has been so devalued its unbelievable. These money hungry multiples like SPECSAVERS give out free sight tests if the customer purchases glasses. IT SHOULD BE THE OTHER WAY.
WORSE TO COME- we have retail managers that used to work in shoe shops, telling optoms how to do their job!!! unqualified, unprofessinal money hungry animals.
Hi there…
FIRST OF ALL:
I just went on a site for LensCrafters and looked at the job-posting. There is this website they use which is a national locator for ALL optometry jobs in the US and Canada. They’ll take all optical companies such as Sears Optical, Target Optical, LensCrafters and Pearle Vision and combine them all to find optometrists full-time or part-time work. They also have them listed in alphabetical order in states and specific cities. I was like wow this is excellent. At first, I thought everyone was talking a LOT of bull****.
Then I was thinking about the statistics. I personally went down this list of all open-positions and counted how many part-time positions were available and then how many full-time positions were available.
I found out there were 175 open positions. 59 were full-time positions and 116 were part-time. I was like DAMN… that means on that list, 33% percent were only full-time. Another good friend of mine is also in optometry school and I asked him what his plans were after school… and he said he might try to do his own practice which is risky since he is coming out with a massive educational loan debt. An ex-gf of mine is graduating this year from optometry school and I asked her what she was doing and she said she might do the whole retail optometry thing for a little, then maybe find a partner and MAYBE start her own practice.
I was browsing around for possible jobs when I do graduate in 2 years and I just wanted to see if these claims were accurate. Man, I think you are right about the job possibilites. You would have to work at 2 or 3 different locations to make a decent salary. I don’t mind working at a few different locations as long as I am being compensated for it, but it could get really annoying to do that. It makes me feel that I am being pulled back and forth to different locations.
I worked retail when I was a kid, but I went to optometry school to work with real mature professionals and other scientists. But the thought of working in a mall optometry store with teenaged kids who are volunteering there is not appealing to me at all. The stores look great and all, but the thing is that I don’t want to tell people that I work retail optometry.
We have gone through real tough science courses, let alone the science courses and testing (OAT) we had to take to get to optometry school, and now I feel like I am back to working retail again.
Another thing that I noticed of all the 175 job opening, which is VERY small amount, is the concept of over-saturation of the market. There are 17 optometry schools and I heard they were going to open 4 more schools of optometry. We are already going to be competeing with the already well-established optometrists who have built a solid patient base and we are already competing with each other as new graduates for whatever open positions there are. We also have to think about the brand new gradutes that will be coming out of school EVERY year! There are already 33,000 practicing optometrists right now in the USA. The average class size may be at least 150 students a year and now multiply that by 17 schools.
150 x 17 = 2,550 at the minimum a year. Some schools carry more. Add another 4 schools to that with a class of 150 students then that number increases to 3,155 annual graduates. In a decade, we will have another 30,000 graduates. So of course it is already becoming over-satured which will make it harder too find work, let alone part-time work. I know there are older optometrists retiring because of age or other reasons, but we are still graduating more students than there are openings or people retiring.
I just called some local retail eye glass stores just NOW and pretty much all of them either said they have no opening right now or they just don’t know if they have openings at the moment. They told me to come by and fill out an application and they will forward it to other doctors or the managers.
Even the managers who manage us in retail are not clinicians and they determine who we see, what to do and where to work! Why it MAY seem better to either franchise your place from corporate OR you can start your practice from scratch as a solo person or with a group. I have noticed things wrong:
Franchise = half your sales will go to corporate and you still have to maintain the place yourself with your OWN money and then corporate will re-imburse you for the costs of maintanence and bills to keep the establishment operational. But you are responsible for everything from hiring your own staff and so on.
Solo practice = have to get your own marketing, sales, accounting, financing is expensive, paying the lease, and utilities for the place and so on. Even if you have your own solo practice you WILL be competing with other optometrist offices out there along with the WORST competition. That is the big time corporations that will promise cheaper eye examinations and products. The average American consumer wants to get in, get checked, purchase and get out. I know I do. If you provide an option to a patient they will just say well I’ll go to an opthomologist or their general practitioner.
The most annoying yet truth is that you might have to be working corporate retail for awhile or maybe for a good long time. That way you get paid…pay down the debt and get benefits along with it, again hopefully you land a job right away.
IN OTHER TOPICS:
Also, the lack of respect that optometrists get when being compared to opthomalogists. I know that we are pushing for more practicing rights in Congress. My friend was also telling me how some opthamologist or a group of opthamologists are trying to pass a bill to get rid of the field of optometry as a whole!!!! Which I know will never pass, since I know opthamologists would never do retail work. I could never imagine talking to an MD and him telling me to come see him at my local LensCrafters or Sears Optical. I do agree that optometry has and is becoming more of what pharmacy is. It is all corporate. I think pharmacy have it worse since it is impossible for them to start their own pharmacy practice, so they are stuck doing retail pharmacy unless they work doing research for Pfizer or something.
Since optometrists are known for working in retail environment, they are associated as being just employees and not doctors. The title is there in front of the name, BUT they don’t get that respect. Lots of your sales are primarily reliant on SELLING! Selling glasses, contacts and eye care products. Most of the prophets will not be on just doing eye examinations and refractions.
Optometrists are PRIMARY eye-care doctors so we KNOW that we cannot treat everything, but we are supposed to be the forefront of diagnosing, prescribing and treating. We do VERY basic eye procedures, if allowable and now I heard we got permission to prescribe oral medications. If we cannot do our work, then we can recommend them to go see an opthamologist or general practicioner.
Opthamologists think that we are trying to take their jobs away when in actuality we help them even get more business, but we just take our cut too by doing the basic work and then if needed we provide references. We realize that we are a team of eye care professionals and we should not be working against each other. But that’s NOT the problem of optometry it’s simple capitalism! Everything is competition to make more money.
I heard that opthamoligists have been getting fed up with the field of optometry and would say that if we wanted more rights for medications and surgeries then we should have gone to medical schools and became actual physicians.
CONCLUSION
I told my friend it does get me a little worried about finding work right now. I mean our income could also be hurting since it depends on our sales too. They can get an eye exam and then go to 1-800-CONTACTS for their merchandise, or even go to CostCo or WalMart for cheaper merchandise. We are a sales driven profession. We are also trying to get on more insurance panels as well.
My mom is also a prime example of how consumers are. At For Eyes they charge $75.00 for an eye exam where at VisionWorks they charge about $40.00. It’s not hard math, you’re going to stop going to ForEyes and switch on over easily. There is no customer/patient loyalty. We are a dime a dozen and the customer will find someone else.
I mean my prescription has not changed in 4 years and vision insurance is the cheapest expense. I even say that if my prescription has not changed in 4 years… they most likely won’t change anymore. But I still need the test to get what I want… whether a new contact design or some cool glasses.
I respect the profession, since I am in it…. but I am also a consumer and have to know that as a consumer you still want better rates and not pay as much.
I also looked into California and YES they are very over-satured so there is not that freedom that people think there is to practice anywhere you want to.
Holy long comment, Batman. If you want to put all that time into it, you can have your own blog, link to this page, and it will show up in this comment list as a trackback.
But the aforementioned technical stuff in no way takes away from your content. Well said.
But I am willing to bet that all career fields look saturated in most markets. I mean, who needs another hair salon or pizza place in their town? There’s already an over abundance of those, yet more keep popping up. Somebody is going to have to go out of business if there is truly over saturation, so my bet is that it will be the one who is perceived the most over-priced, least liked, and/or most inconvenient.
But remember what Rush says. Capitalism isn’t a zero sum game. In a free market, the pie keeps getting bigger. If we could only put government back in its place, like Reagan did, we could all grow.
I am in the process of applying for Fall 2010, and I must say this blog made me pause and think – am I making the right choice? But, there is nothing else that I am interested in, besides eyes. So, it’s either optometry or opthalmology, and the later one is so much longer, with so much more debt to accumulate. Forget it! Optometry it is – beats selling Rxn drugs, if you ask me.
Optometry is a wonderful career if you have the right mindset.
Check out my website to actually see some POSITIVE stuff about being an optometry student.
http://www.OptometryStudents.com
Being a student rocks!!!
To bad we all have to move on and make a living…
Hey I’m currently in the process of applying (studying for the OAT and gonna apply in the fall), so I still have time to change my mind. Honeslty, I wasn’t completely sure about what I saw from my shadowing and working at a private office, but the ODs were all such great ppl that I was inspired, and I bought into it for the flexibility and lifestyle. But after reading some of the stuff seasoned ODs (albeit bitter ones too) have said, I’m having serious doubts. PLease answer as honestly as you can, knowing what you know now, would you apply again in today’s economy/healthcare reform/increasing continuing edu hrs, etc…(Oh, and I live in CA). And what advice would you tell your 23 year-old daughter if she wanted to do optometry c/o 2015? I appreciate any feedback!!
@Mary
I would tell my daughter that I’m not sure why she’s spending loads and loads of money on getting a doctorate when her primary goal is to be a full-time, stay-at-home Mom. Her husband better start providing better for her family, or I’m gonna kick his butt. If she’s not married yet, there are plenty of career opportunities with only a cheap bachelor’s degree which allow her to live a comfortable life until her prince comes.
But in your case, I would say being an eye doctor is great as long as you like that sort of thing. Being an optical retailer is not the same thing as being an eye doctor, so if you dislike retailing (and all the slick optical vendors) like I do then steer clear of private practice and work for government (VA, IHS, .mil), chains, OMD, or Walmart.
Hey, I’m currently in the process of studying for the OAT and applying for Fall of 2011. You are right on track with the other optometrists that I have shadowed. They all said they’d have done something other than optometry given the chance again. This blog and their comments have pretty much turned my world upside down. I’ve got a Bio degree and lots of optometry related extra-curriculars. I’ve been studying for months for this test. Like Mary said above, I am very unsure about everything now. In this case, I’m the man and husband to a kindergarten teacher. And yes, I bought into the flexability and lifestyle too. I hate sales!!!!! My only business advice from my dad: don’t go into sales!!!! If I’m not doing optometry, I don’t know where to throw my Bio degree. What should I do? Oh, did I mention, I hate sales.