Importance of Residency?

[captaincrunch]

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Hi,

I am not an optometry student, but would like to ask you all how important residency training is in optometry. My understanding is that it is optional if you want to refine your skills. But does the additional training actually make a difference when it comes time to find a job or negotiate a salary? Thanks.

 

[eyestrain]

Hi,

I am not an optometry student, but would like to ask you all how important residency training is in optometry. My understanding is that it is optional if you want to refine your skills. But does the additional training actually make a difference when it comes time to find a job or negotiate a salary? Thanks.

We had a guy come into class and tell us about the "Million Dollar Guarantee" that says if you do a residency you'll make a million more dollars over the course of your career than someone who doesn't do one. He was also working 80hr/wk at lenscrafters...

 

[xmattODx]

We had a guy come into class and tell us about the "Million Dollar Guarantee" that says if you do a residency you'll make a million more dollars over the course of your career than someone who doesn't do one. He was also working 80hr/wk at lenscrafters...

This is the greatest thing I have ever read!

 

[vtrain]

More job opportunites? Sure. More money? No.

 

[Hines302]

More job opportunites? Sure. More money? No.

Agreed. Don't do a residency for more money... do one because you want to improve your skills, and become farmiluar and more comfortable with more comeplex cases.

 

[peacebro]

A friend told me that in the interviews the interviewers can be abusive and your information is not private. By the time you get to the second interview a warped version of your story already got to the 2nd interviewer. If your really lucky you get accepted and can be their servant for a whole year.

 

[nose_pads]

??

 

[jc812]

I don't think that just obtaining a residency is going to make you a richer person. It's the fact that you're knowledgable and know more about a specific area.. and patients will see that in you, and return. Which, essentially calls for larger profits.

 

[drgregory]

We had a guy come into class and tell us about the "Million Dollar Guarantee" that says if you do a residency you'll make a million more dollars over the course of your career than someone who doesn't do one. He was also working 80hr/wk at lenscrafters...

haha! figures.

 

[drgregory]

i dont stand as an authority on this, because i have never done a residency, but from my classmates who did one i heard mostly negatives. the residencies were basically primary eye care - not like the resident was learning anything new. we had a resident that worked at our clinic in optometry school. basically they saw a whopping total of only 3 or 4 patients per day, and did little more than a comprehensive eye exam. i bet they were happy with their choice. ive heard from a few others that they were basically a low paid OD at a referral center for one year, churning out 35-40 patients a day. i would imagine their exposure allowed them to view a considerable amount of path and such, and i guess if this were to get their foot in the door for future employment at such a place it would be worth it.
IMO OD school should be the required 4 years, plus one residency (which is more like an internship), allowing for more time to be spent in systemic disease recognition and collaboration with MDs so that we might understand them and they might understand us to some degree, especially if we want to be part of mainstream healthcare. of course due to our current problems, we'd have to change some things, as i can imagine a conversation between a resident OD and an attending MD being something like this:

MD: "well young man, what are your plans after residency?"

intern OD: "im going to work at walmart"

MD: "thats great sport. could you go get me some coffee. oh, and dont forget the sugar. and after that, maybe you could wash my lab coat. if you do a good job, maybe i'll show you what a sphygmomanometer looks like."

 

[KHE]

as i can imagine a conversation between a resident OD and an attending MD being something like this:

MD: "well young man, what are your plans after residency?"

intern OD: "im going to work at walmart"

MD: "thats great sport. could you go get me some coffee. oh, and dont forget the sugar. and after that, maybe you could wash my lab coat. if you do a good job, maybe i'll show you what a sphygmomanometer looks like."

Or it could go something like this:

MD: "well young man, what are your plans after residency?"

intern OD: "Im going to join a private practice located in between a nail salon and a pizzeria where I will be employed by an old doctor who illegally pays me as an independent contractor. I will examine patients for him using his equipment from the Eisenhower era and give the patients a prescription for private label contact lenses that you can only get at that office. I will then walk that patient over to the optical area where the cute girl will try to convince them that they really really REALLY need A/R coated progressive polycarbonate transitions lenses."

MD:"Thats great, sport. Hey! Do you think you can get me a few boxes of acuvues?"

 

[peacebro]

Don't bother with ORMs. They match you with whoever they want anyway. The student doesn't have a say, they just charge you and make you think you do.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

Or it could go something like this:

MD: "well young man, what are your plans after residency?"

intern OD: "Im going to join a private practice located in between a nail salon and a pizzeria where I will be employed by an old doctor who illegally pays me as an independent contractor. I will examine patients for him using his equipment from the Eisenhower era and give the patients a prescription for private label contact lenses that you can only get at that office. I will then walk that patient over to the optical area where the cute girl will try to convince them that they really really REALLY need A/R coated progressive polycarbonate transitions lenses."

MD:"Thats great, sport. Hey! Do you think you can get me a few boxes of acuvues?"

Don't knock the pro-pizzaria location. When I worked for an OD, I hated having to drive 5 minutes to get lunch. Plus, you're ideally placed for hot cheese in eye accidents.

 

[drgregory]

Or it could go something like this:

MD: "well young man, what are your plans after residency?"

intern OD: "Im going to join a private practice located in between a nail salon and a pizzeria where I will be employed by an old doctor who illegally pays me as an independent contractor. I will examine patients for him using his equipment from the Eisenhower era and give the patients a prescription for private label contact lenses that you can only get at that office. I will then walk that patient over to the optical area where the cute girl will try to convince them that they really really REALLY need A/R coated progressive polycarbonate transitions lenses."

MD:"Thats great, sport. Hey! Do you think you can get me a few boxes of acuvues?"

another likely scenario. i especially like the Eisenhower era twist and cute girl, i mean, optician part.

 

[iiiimonica]

look we get it - some md's don't respect od's, some od's are not happy with their jobs - can you please stop trashing the profession that some of us took considerable time choosing?

i have worked in the field for 10 years as an optician and yes some optometrists are misarable, but the great ones that i aspire to be like loved their jobs (well most of the time) were loved by their patients and take the primary care of eyes very very seriously.

to the students who have not have such exposure, your slamming does a disservice to our field, presenting a view that is way skewed negative.

residency - do one if you can get a speacilization (low vision, contacts) or an awesome mentor. it will not help you "hang a shingle", but will help you if you can utilize the extra info. do you need to do one - no. should you? up to you, and what you hope to get out of your training.

 

[VA Hopeful Dr]

look we get it - some md's don't respect od's, some od's are not happy with their jobs - can you please stop trashing the profession that some of us took considerable time choosing?

i have worked in the field for 10 years as an optician and yes some optometrists are misarable, but the great ones that i aspire to be like loved their jobs (well most of the time) were loved by their patients and take the primary care of eyes very very seriously.

to the students who have not have such exposure, your slamming does a disservice to our field, presenting a view that is way skewed negative.

residency - do one if you can get a speacilization (low vision, contacts) or an awesome mentor. it will not help you "hang a shingle", but will help you if you can utilize the extra info. do you need to do one - no. should you? up to you, and what you hope to get out of your training.

I wouldn't say they are trashing the profession. KHE and drgregory are merely presenting their own opinions. Optometry is great, but prospective ODs should be made aware of the downsides of the profession BEFORE spending lots of $$$ on OD school. I personally think that most of the negatives are outweighed by the positives (limited scope kept me out), others feel differently. You are happy in your choice, you can come here and explain why and extole the virtues of optometry. Let others do the same.

 

[drgregory]

I wouldn't say they are trashing the profession. KHE and drgregory are merely presenting their own opinions. Optometry is great, but prospective ODs should be made aware of the downsides of the profession BEFORE spending lots of $$$ on OD school. I personally think that most of the negatives are outweighed by the positives (limited scope kept me out), others feel differently. You are happy in your choice, you can come here and explain why and extole the virtues of optometry. Let others do the same.

good post. i have a goal to try to teach prospective ODs that commercial optometry is very seldom helpful to the field of optometry. KHE is a realist who brings forth valuable insight on how the ancient, spectacle peddling, private OD who does little in the way of primary eye care is also killing optometry. my hopes (and i think KHE's), is that our opinions of optometry are at least noted and stored in the back of optometry students' minds to be used upon making the decision to apply and if so, after graduation.
sorry to speak for you KHE, but i know who you are and you know who i am, and we both have strong (and IMO accurate) opinions of certain aspects of optometry.

 

[KHE]

good post. i have a goal to try to teach prospective ODs that commercial optometry is very seldom helpful to the field of optometry. KHE is a realist who brings forth valuable insight on how the ancient, spectacle peddling, private OD who does little in the way of primary eye care is also killing optometry. my hopes (and i think KHE's), is that our opinions of optometry are at least noted and stored in the back of optometry students' minds to be used upon making the decision to apply and if so, after graduation.
sorry to speak for you KHE, but i know who you are and you know who i am, and we both have strong (and IMO accurate) opinions of certain aspects of optometry.

Dr. Gregory and I agree on most things. I however do not vilify or condemn commercial practices or the doctors who practice in them nearly as much as he does.

I strongly agree with him that commercial practice does not portray the best image of the profession or our abilities. However, I contend that there are just as many "private practices" out there if NOT MORE that are really no better than the vast majority of commercial locations out there. As I have said before, can anyone really make the argument that a Lenscrafters in an upscale mall is as bad an image for the profession as a private office in between the pizzeria and the nail salon? I doubt it.

And unfortunately, thats what a lot of private practices out there are like.

I find a lot of contempt directed at commercial doctors by private docs is largely hypocritical because so many private doctors are living the proverbial glass house.

I do not know if Dr. Gregory falls in this category. I don't get the impression that he does, but I have never met him nor have I visited his office. While I agree with the spirit of most of the things he says, I think he sometimes goes too far in his attempts to portray commercial doctors as corporate sell outs who only care about instant gratification and who are slaves to their corporate masters while private practitioners are all fine upstanding altruisitic doctors who care only about the health and welfare of their patients.


My main concern is that optometry students and pre-optometry students have a bit of a distorted view of the profession and what it takes to have a rewarding career in it. Many students are excited about the prospect of "being a doctor." They think they will get paid good money to help people see better and HEY, what could be better than that right? They envision themselves being an owner of their own upscale private office filled with designer merchandise and a waiting room full of grateful patients who have all kinds of interesting ocular pathology and who are eager to buy your designer merchandise. They think that they will be well loved by their patients because they will impress them by doing all kinds of extra tests on them.

Since I only practice on a limited basis, it has afforded me the opportunity to take a step back and reflect on what I should have done differently and what students who are considering this as a field should be doing to ensure that they get themselves on the right path.

For the record, I don't think I have ever bad mouthed the profession of optometry per se. YOU CAN HAVE A REWARDING CAREER IN OPTOMETRY!!!!

However, to do that you have to do a lot of research about the areas in which you want to practice. And as I have said before, that research has very little to do with how many ODs or OMDs are in that area or what the scope of state licensure is in that state.

 

[blazenmadison]

to the students who have not have such exposure, your slamming does a disservice to our field, presenting a view that is way skewed negative.

It's nice to hear the negatives to be well-informed, but at the same time hundreds/thousands visit this forum and the negative comments alienate highly qualified preopt students. We should be increasing the the quality of our applicant pool so that we will have better trained and motivated optometrists to represent the field.

 

[drgregory]

My main concern is that optometry students and pre-optometry students have a bit of a distorted view of the profession and what it takes to have a rewarding career in it. Many students are excited about the prospect of "being a doctor." They think they will get paid good money to help people see better and HEY, what could be better than that right? They envision themselves being an owner of their own upscale private office filled with designer merchandise and a waiting room full of grateful patients who have all kinds of interesting ocular pathology and who are eager to buy your designer merchandise. They think that they will be well loved by their patients because they will impress them by doing all kinds of extra tests on them.

well put.

 

[KHE]

It's nice to hear the negatives to be well-informed, but at the same time hundreds/thousands visit this forum and the negative comments alienate highly qualified preopt students. We should be increasing the the quality of our applicant pool so that we will have better trained and motivated optometrists to represent the field.

What qualities should one have to become a "better trained and motivated optometrist."

Again, I have never denegrated optometry. All I'm trying to point out is that to have a rewarding career in this field, you have to do lots of research and do a lot of thinking BEFORE you go to optometry school. If the "hundreds/thousands of highly qualified pre-opt students" you speak of are alienated by that then thats probably a good thing because they would have been doomed anyways.

Please do NOT fall into the trap of "I'll just work really hard and everything will be fine." Amorphous notions like "I'm going to work hard" will not get you anywhere.

You need a concrete and specific plan of action.

 

[drgregory]

We should be increasing the the quality of our applicant pool so that we will have better trained and motivated optometrists to represent the field.

or we should be decreasing the number of openings these applicants are attempting to obtain, like dental did 20 years ago.

 

[KHE]

or we should be decreasing the number of openings these applicants are attempting to obtain, like dental did 20 years ago.

Not only is that solution the simplest, it is also the one solution that would solve more problems than any other.

 

[blazenmadison]

Not only is that solution the simplest, it is also the one solution that would solve more problems than any other.

How do we put that solution into action?
Start a letter-writing campaign? Have a letter signed by thousands of optometrists and send it to the schools and AOA? Get the word out and get noticed? Threaten to end donations to their alma mater?

How can we convince or even 'force' schools like PCO to cut their enrollment? Make the new NBEO twice as hard? Or make the students take the USMLE step 1 and 2. Then 1/2 of the class will just dropout.