Optometrist Diagnose, manage, and treat conditions and diseases of the human eye and visual system. Examine eyes and visual system, diagnose problems or impairments, prescribe corrective lenses, and provide treatment. May prescribe therapeutic drugs to treat specific eye conditions.
Optometrist is Also Know as
In different settings, Optometrist is titled as
- Optometrist
- Optometry Doctor (OD)
- Therapeutic Optometrist
Education and Training of Optometrist
Optometrist is categorized in Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed
Experience Required for Optometrist
Extensive skill, knowledge, and experience are needed for these occupations. Many require more than five years of experience. For example, surgeons must complete four years of college and an additional five to seven years of specialized medical training to be able to do their job.
Education Required for Optometrist
Most of these occupations require graduate school. For example, they may require a master's degree, and some require a Ph.D., M.D., or J.D. (law degree).
Degrees Related to Optometrist
Training Required for Optometrist
Employees may need some on-the-job training, but most of these occupations assume that the person will already have the required skills, knowledge, work-related experience, and/or training.
Related Ocuupations
Some Ocuupations related to Optometrist in different industries are
- Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric
- Emergency Medicine Physicians
- General Internal Medicine Physicians
- Pediatric Surgeons
- Dermatologists
- Allergists and Immunologists
- Obstetricians and Gynecologists
- Neurologists
- Chiropractors
- Urologists
- Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons
- Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physicians
- Nurse Practitioners
- Cardiologists
- Pediatricians, General
- Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric
- Ophthalmic Medical Technicians
- Podiatrists
- Audiologists
- Family Medicine Physicians
What Do Optometrist do?
- Examine eyes, using observation, instruments, and pharmaceutical agents, to determine visual acuity and perception, focus, and coordination and to diagnose diseases and other abnormalities, such as glaucoma or color blindness.
- Analyze test results and develop a treatment plan.
- Prescribe, supply, fit and adjust eyeglasses, contact lenses, and other vision aids.
- Prescribe medications to treat eye diseases if state laws permit.
- Educate and counsel patients on contact lens care, visual hygiene, lighting arrangements, and safety factors.
- Consult with and refer patients to ophthalmologist or other health care practitioner if additional medical treatment is determined necessary.
- Remove foreign bodies from the eye.
- Provide patients undergoing eye surgeries, such as cataract and laser vision correction, with pre- and post-operative care.
- Prescribe therapeutic procedures to correct or conserve vision.
- Provide vision therapy and low-vision rehabilitation.
Qualities of Good Optometrist
- Oral Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in speaking so others will understand.
- Problem Sensitivity: The ability to tell when something is wrong or is likely to go wrong. It does not involve solving the problem, only recognizing that there is a problem.
- Written Comprehension: The ability to read and understand information and ideas presented in writing.
- Oral Comprehension: The ability to listen to and understand information and ideas presented through spoken words and sentences.
- Deductive Reasoning: The ability to apply general rules to specific problems to produce answers that make sense.
- Inductive Reasoning: The ability to combine pieces of information to form general rules or conclusions (includes finding a relationship among seemingly unrelated events).
- Near Vision: The ability to see details at close range (within a few feet of the observer).
- Written Expression: The ability to communicate information and ideas in writing so others will understand.
- Information Ordering: The ability to arrange things or actions in a certain order or pattern according to a specific rule or set of rules (e.g., patterns of numbers, letters, words, pictures, mathematical operations).
- Flexibility of Closure: The ability to identify or detect a known pattern (a figure, object, word, or sound) that is hidden in other distracting material.
- Speech Clarity: The ability to speak clearly so others can understand you.
- Speech Recognition: The ability to identify and understand the speech of another person.
- Category Flexibility: The ability to generate or use different sets of rules for combining or grouping things in different ways.
- Finger Dexterity: The ability to make precisely coordinated movements of the fingers of one or both hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble very small objects.
- Far Vision: The ability to see details at a distance.
- Selective Attention: The ability to concentrate on a task over a period of time without being distracted.
- Arm-Hand Steadiness: The ability to keep your hand and arm steady while moving your arm or while holding your arm and hand in one position.
- Visual Color Discrimination: The ability to match or detect differences between colors, including shades of color and brightness.
- Control Precision: The ability to quickly and repeatedly adjust the controls of a machine or a vehicle to exact positions.
- Fluency of Ideas: The ability to come up with a number of ideas about a topic (the number of ideas is important, not their quality, correctness, or creativity).
- Perceptual Speed: The ability to quickly and accurately compare similarities and differences among sets of letters, numbers, objects, pictures, or patterns. The things to be compared may be presented at the same time or one after the other. This ability also includes comparing a presented object with a remembered object.
- Visualization: The ability to imagine how something will look after it is moved around or when its parts are moved or rearranged.
- Time Sharing: The ability to shift back and forth between two or more activities or sources of information (such as speech, sounds, touch, or other sources).
- Manual Dexterity: The ability to quickly move your hand, your hand together with your arm, or your two hands to grasp, manipulate, or assemble objects.
- Mathematical Reasoning: The ability to choose the right mathematical methods or formulas to solve a problem.
- Originality: The ability to come up with unusual or clever ideas about a given topic or situation, or to develop creative ways to solve a problem.
- Number Facility: The ability to add, subtract, multiply, or divide quickly and correctly.
- Speed of Closure: The ability to quickly make sense of, combine, and organize information into meaningful patterns.
- Memorization: The ability to remember information such as words, numbers, pictures, and procedures.
- Depth Perception: The ability to judge which of several objects is closer or farther away from you, or to judge the distance between you and an object.
- Multilimb Coordination: The ability to coordinate two or more limbs (for example, two arms, two legs, or one leg and one arm) while sitting, standing, or lying down. It does not involve performing the activities while the whole body is in motion.
- Auditory Attention: The ability to focus on a single source of sound in the presence of other distracting sounds.
- Hearing Sensitivity: The ability to detect or tell the differences between sounds that vary in pitch and loudness.
- Trunk Strength: The ability to use your abdominal and lower back muscles to support part of the body repeatedly or continuously over time without "giving out" or fatiguing.
- Rate Control: The ability to time your movements or the movement of a piece of equipment in anticipation of changes in the speed and/or direction of a moving object or scene.
- Reaction Time: The ability to quickly respond (with the hand, finger, or foot) to a signal (sound, light, picture) when it appears.
- Wrist-Finger Speed: The ability to make fast, simple, repeated movements of the fingers, hands, and wrists.
- Static Strength: The ability to exert maximum muscle force to lift, push, pull, or carry objects.
- Response Orientation: The ability to choose quickly between two or more movements in response to two or more different signals (lights, sounds, pictures). It includes the speed with which the correct response is started with the hand, foot, or other body part.
- Extent Flexibility: The ability to bend, stretch, twist, or reach with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Dynamic Strength: The ability to exert muscle force repeatedly or continuously over time. This involves muscular endurance and resistance to muscle fatigue.
- Explosive Strength: The ability to use short bursts of muscle force to propel oneself (as in jumping or sprinting), or to throw an object.
- Gross Body Coordination: The ability to coordinate the movement of your arms, legs, and torso together when the whole body is in motion.
- Gross Body Equilibrium: The ability to keep or regain your body balance or stay upright when in an unstable position.
- Dynamic Flexibility: The ability to quickly and repeatedly bend, stretch, twist, or reach out with your body, arms, and/or legs.
- Stamina: The ability to exert yourself physically over long periods of time without getting winded or out of breath.
- Night Vision: The ability to see under low-light conditions.
- Peripheral Vision: The ability to see objects or movement of objects to one's side when the eyes are looking ahead.
- Glare Sensitivity: The ability to see objects in the presence of a glare or bright lighting.
- Sound Localization: The ability to tell the direction from which a sound originated.
- Speed of Limb Movement: The ability to quickly move the arms and legs.
- Spatial Orientation: The ability to know your location in relation to the environment or to know where other objects are in relation to you.
Tools Used by Optometrist
- 4-well lens holders
- 8-well lens flippers
- Adult fixation targets
- Amsler grids
- Autorefractors
- Binocular indirect ophthalmoscopes
- Biomicroscopes
- Broken wheel visual acuity cards
- Child fixation targets
- Clear 20 diopter condensing lenses
- Clear 78 diopter condensing lenses
- Color vision testing devices
- Combined cover paddle occluders
- Contact lens loupes
- Corneal pachymeters
- Corneal topographers
- Desktop computers
- Fixation cards
- Fundus cameras
- Golf club spuds
- Gonioscopy lenses
- Halberg clips
- Half nylon gripping pliers
- Horizontal prism bars
- HRR Hardy-Rand-Rittler plates
- Hruby lenses
- Ishihara plates
- Keratometers
- Lachrymal cannulae
- Lachrymal dilators
- Lea symbols near vision cards
- Lens calipers
- Lens clocks
- Lensometers
- Loose prisms
- Mechanical stethoscopes
- Multiple pin hole occluders
- Multiple pinhole mask occluders
- Non-contact handheld fundus lenses
- Notebook computers
- Ophthalmic transilluminators
- Ophthalmoscopes
- Optical screwdrivers
- Pediatric near point cards
- Personal computers
- Phoroptors
- Pupil diameter PD rules
- Randot stereo tests
- Retinal cameras
- Retinoscopes
- Retinoscopy racks
- Scleral depressors
- Single Lea symbol books
- Skiascopic lens rack
- Snellen eye charts
- Snipe nose pliers
- Sphygmomanometers
- Tonometers
- Trial lens sets
- Wide jaw angling pliers
- Worth 4-dot tests
- Yellow condensing lenses
Technology Skills required for Optometrist
- Accra Med Software Filopto
- AltaPoint Data Systems AltaPoint Vision
- Babcock Winx Pro
- Compulink Business Systems Eyecare Advantage
- Digital Healthcare OptoMize
- First Insight E-Z Frame
- First Insight MaximEyes
- HealthLine Systems Eyecom
- Insight Software My Vision Express
- Intuit QuickBooks
- MAX Systems Max-Gold7
- MediNotes Charting Plus
- Microsoft Access
- Microsoft Excel
- Microsoft SQL Server
- Microsoft Word
- OfficeMate Software Solutions ExamWRITER
- OfficeMate Software Solutions OfficeMate
- Operational Data Store ODS software
- Prima Systems OPTIX
- Scheduling software
- Universal Software Solutions VersaVision
- VisionScience Software Acuity Pro
- Web browser software