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.

Check out my website to actually see some POSITIVE stuff about being an optometry student.

http://www.OptometryStudents.com

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.

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.

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.