i think this post is dead on. Ive said before that optometry, as a profession, is like a teenager who doesnt really know whats best to do for himself in the long-term. It just does whatever seems cool at the moment. Turning od offices into a starwars show sounds like a great idea, right? Were expanding the practice rights of the profession, what could be more important? Well, everything could be more important, at least right now. What good does it do to have ods expanding our scope to include laser procedures if 80% of us will be glorified refracting opticians in 10 years? Great, well have a few dozen ods out there saving the world while the other 60,000 in the country turn dials at eyemart.
I know of very few practicing ods who would actually consider adding laser procedures to their practice even if they could so why is this such a big issue right now? The cost of the equipment is prohibitive and the return would be hard to justify the expense based on reimbursement levels which are sure to drop anyway once we start doing them widespread. The people who are fascinated by this idea are a few optometric "renegades" and pre-optometry / optometry students. Most practicing ods i know are saying whatever, i have no interest in doing any of that stuff in my office.
personally, i dont think true surgery has any place in the od scope given our current training model, but i know thats not the popular opinion on this forum, at least from the od side. We just dont have the ability to provide the patient volume necessary to make it practical. If you want to be an eye surgeon, dont go to optometry school. Go get a medical degree, do a residency that provides you with thousands upon thousands of surgical patients to practice on, and then have at it. There are other ods out there who've made that choice and now they're well-trained surgeons. Trying to create insta-surgeons with weekend training courses that involve as few as one single human patient is absolutely insane. It makes us look like desperate wannabees. sorry, but its true.
I know a lot of people on this forum will find my views on this topic to be tantamount to blasphemy, but as anyone whos read my posts knows, i think there are far more pressing issues to deal with for the profession. Instead of trying to snap our fingers and wake up the next day as well-trained surgeons, we should be trying to repair the damaged profession we currently have. Maybe after addressing the issues we have, we can start worrying about laying the foundations that need to be in place before proceeding with scope expansion that includes surgery. Until then, i think our focus should be elsewhere.