The outlook presently is very much tied to geography as the previous poster said. Unfortunately, while in school and as a new grad, you simply will not know where a good practice location is and most likely will find yourself in an overly saturated community.
This will not be improving anytime soon with new schools and more grads. There are simply too many students. Some will counter and say increased population size will make it ok. That is not the present reality. There are too many students and OD's.
The schools would like to have you believe that you will be treating and managing lots of disease. The reality is that most likely you will not. Medical panels are highly discriminatory towards OD's and unless you're in the right geographical location, you cannot be paid for your time and services and about 80% of the education that you have overpaid for.
Which brings us to the cost. You will incur six figure debt that you will probably not default on. But, you will be working perhaps a whole week every month just to service that loan. The other 3 weeks you get to split towards family, house, bills, etc.
The new norm is for new grads to work a day here, work a day there, work a day over there, and maybe another over there. Full time work is no longer the norm in big cities.
The Optometric organizations that are supposed to be looking after your interest, are now looking for ways to bleed more $$ out of you with new a new board certification program. A program that is not presently not needed, has no merit, and is essentially a way to increase revenue.
Then there is corporate influence and vision plans. Vision plans, which do not pay you fairly for your time, are trying to expand into the medical arena in the new age of healthcare, and will continue to decrease reimbursement and they will be spending millions to convince medical plans not to take you.
The result of these influences is you have to see a ridiculous amount of patients to service your loan and lifestyle. The patient loses, you lose and the corporations/Vision plans win.
As you can see in eyecare there are many political influences that students and new grads are not aware of. Schools will not mention them, and students looking to get in don't want to talk about these either.
Hopefully you don't view this as haterism because I assure you this is not the case. These are the facts. And you can disregard and jump in or you can pause and plan a new course.
There are many who in spite of all this find a great opportunity, and get to have it all. They manage disease, get paid properly, see a reasonable amount of pts. However most likely it will never happen this way or it will take several years of fighting in the trenches before a suitable practice opportunity is found.
