Can a student only apply to residency programs that are affiliated with the school he or she went to? What if someone wants to do a residency in refractive/ocular surgery and it is not offered by the school or in the state he or she studied in?
Question about residencies
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There are no restrictions that would prevent an OD from any optometry school doing a residency at any of the US programs, but many schools prefer to take students who graduated elsewhere.
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Jasonk, I see you posting a lot on here. Do you think residency is worth the time/pay cut for the potential payout later?
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What potential payout do you see for having done a residency?
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That's a really hard question to answer. For me, it was worth it, but I can't say that everyone would agree with me on that. A lot of ODs think residencies are a waste of time (usually ones that didn't do a residency) and there are some very good arguments to support that claim.
I came out of my residency a completely different doctor than I went in. I was more confident, I was more comfortable with complicated patients, and I was a lot faster. But practically speaking, was I "better" clinically than the guy who's been in private practice for 5 or 10 years seeing a wide range of primary care and ocular disease? Hardly. That guy could have "wiped the floor" with me. Some OD resident hopefuls think that if they complete a residency in something, that they come out the other side with a level of knowledge that separates them completely from other ODs who have not completed a residency in that area....not true. When you finish your residency, you're still going to be very "green," just much less so than a newbie.
Optometric residencies, with a couple of exceptions, don't enable you to do anything that a non-residency grad can't do herself. Even those that do (eg laser use in OK), don't allow you to do anything that another OD couldn't still do by taking a brief certification course. The point is, OD residencies are about skill enhancement and exposure to a lot of repetition in a concentrated area. They are not about "specializing" as are most medical and dental residencies.
Advantages:
Increased confidence, increased speed, exposure to more complex cases, ability to work in good PP for some programs (can help w/ networking), slight hiring advantage over new grads, better potential for career in academics if that interests you
Disadvantages:
Financial cost, time cost, no significant pay increase, potential for some skill loss if you don't keep up your primary care skills
Just know that doing an OD residency, while worthwhile in terms of experience, will cost you some money in terms of potential income and interest if you have loans. Also know that if you expect to be paid more than a new grad right out of school, you'll be disappointed. Residency-trained docs in fields with true specialization potential are usually paid more/earn more because they can bill for services that reimburse at a much higher rate than their general practice peers. Residency-trained ODs are still general practitioners and they bill for exactly the same procedures and services that non-trained ones do. It's up to the individual to decide whether or not the benefits outweigh the costs. If you find one area of optometry interesting, a residency will help you gain a lot of experience in that area fairly quickly, but it is absolutely not necessary in order to practice in that area.
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Thank you so much for being so honest. Ultimately my dream would be to work primarily with children in some sort of MD/OD practice or hospital, so that was why I was curious. As I scout through the curricula of the schools I'm applying to, I see varying levels of courses on pediatrics/VT/strabismus/amblyopia, etc. I guess for me I'm not more so looking for a huge pay increase, but I would love to be able to be someone that other docs refer to someday.
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No problem! If you do pursue pediatric optometry, you'll at least have an edge over many grads coming out. Some PP docs (MDs and ODs) would love to pawn off their pediatric patients to an OD who would take them off their hands. That doesn't mean that jobs will be falling into your lap, but you'll likely be better off than your classmates.
Anyone who's going into an OD program these days should have a bullet-proof plan for how they will avoid being shot out into the commercial abyss. Sounds like you might be forming one now!
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Well it's good to know that I'll hopefully be able to minimize/eliminate my association with commercial places. In your opinion, why do other docs try to "pawn off pediatric patients"?
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Some docs don't like to deal with little kids in the exam room. They present their own set of challenges to the clinician, but in reality, so do adult patients. I know pediatric ODs who couldn't stand the thought of dealing with geriatric patients all day long or even routine adults, for that matter. Personally, I don't mind examining kids, but I wouldn't want to be doing it all day. You definitely have to shift gears completely when you go from 85 year-old Ester to 5 year-old sara, but in my mind, that's what makes any "doctoring" kind of fun. That said, I think there would be some PP owners out there who might see a peds-trained OD and think to themselves "Sa-WEET, here ya go....EN-joy!" Of course, the practice would have to be large enough to keep you busy with kids a large percentage of the time.
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thanks for your input, it gives me a glimmer of hope for my future.
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Yeah, if you practiced near me, you'd be getting all my peds patients. NOT what I want to do!!! lol. Give me the geriatric patients, please.
