I have been accepted to optometry school. I am sure I could get into medical school. I have poor hand-eye coordination so it would be in everyone's best interest if I stayed away from surgery. Since I don't want to do surgery does opthalmology really have anything more to offer than optometry?
OD or MD? Advice please
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Andrew_Doan
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bigred said:
If you are sure that you don't want to do surgery AND you only want to be an eye doctor, then go into optometry.
If you even have the itch to be a medical doctor and perhaps be something other than an eye doctor, then I recommend medical school which will allow you to do many, many things.
Good luck!
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bigred said:
Ophthalmology does make some more medical options available, but it's a surgical field. It would be impossible to become an ophthalmologist w/o doing surgery (at least during training). Also, getting into medical school is just one step. After that you have to continue competing to get into an ophthalmology residency. So if you're 100% sure that you don't want to do surgery and definitely want to just stick with the eyes, then the ophthalmology route might not be worth it for you. However, how bad is your hand-eye coordination? With enough practice, you might still have the ability to be a good surgeon.
I agree whole-heartedly with Dr. Doan. I was in your position 4 years ago. I had been accepted to optometry school but knew I could get into medical school. Even though I was pretty sure I wanted to be an eye doctor, I was still curious about other medical specialties. Because of that, I went to medical school. And 4 years later, here I am, matched in ophthalmology...and very happy with my decision.
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to81 said:
Awesome! Congrats!!!
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If you decide to go to med school to do Ophthy, you'll be at a considerable advantage. You can get started right off the bat doing research on the side, stopping by the eye clinic in your spare time, meeting the chair - all that good stuff while the rest of your classmates are still unsure how to even spell Ophthalmology. If you can put out a few eye papers & get first authorship in one or two, you're 10 steps ahead of all the other Ophthy candidates (I wish I had done this). And really - unless you have an awful tremor you can become a surgeon. If it turns out you find intraocular surgery unnerving, there's neuro, peds, plastics & path. But hey, I'm a believer - just matched to Ophthy and I'm happy as a clam. Now if I could just figure out how to master counter-strike with whats left of 4th year without getting carpal tunnel...
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I just suffered throught the same decision, except I already knew my acceptance. Practical step is to first give your school their deposit in case you don't get into med school, its getting late in the process if you haven't heard or applied yet.
My decision was extremely difficult, it was so close factors such as city, cost of living in where I wanted to go to school and distance from home is what gave medical school its edge. If I was sure I wanted to do Eye's and didn't want to do surgery, then I would have chosen PCO. Good luck
My decision was extremely difficult, it was so close factors such as city, cost of living in where I wanted to go to school and distance from home is what gave medical school its edge. If I was sure I wanted to do Eye's and didn't want to do surgery, then I would have chosen PCO. Good luck
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monstermatch said:
I gave up computer and video games during residency. I started getting carpal tunnel from clicking the dang mouse too much. Kick the habit now before it's too late! 😉
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bigred said:
You should also read this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=168968
Thanks for all of your input, especially you Dr. Doan. I am going to go to SUNY Optometry. I felt optometry was right for me before I posed the question, but I wanted to get an opthalmologist perspective from an opthalmologist.
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Andrew_Doan said:
WHAT?!?!?!?! 😱 ??? 😱 😱 ???
Nobody told me I'd have to give up UT2004 to become a surgeon! Oh well, it looks like it's back to the old RTS games 😴
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Andrew_Doan said:
NOOOOooooooooooooooo 😱
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🙁 🙁 Maybe I shouldn't have bought that PS2 🙁 🙁
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Sledge2005 said:
It was actually the RTS games that was bad for my carpel tunnel. Did you ever play Warcraft & Starcraft? I was addicted to MMORPGs too. I was one of the beta testers for Ultima Online. I was intrigued when players were selling game items on eBay for thousands of dollars!
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=33887&item=8167960654&rd=1
My stopping of this addiction was a wonderful thing. It allowed me to pursue other endeavors, like increasing my skills as an Eye Physician & Surgeon, and creating www.eyerounds.org and www.medrounds.org! 😉
I "met" dozens of online players who were failing out of college and grad schools because of these games. 😱
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