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- Jun 14, 2005
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Please stop getting involved in the whole ophthalmology/optometry debates on here. Most of the opthalmology residents and med student ophthalmologist hopefulls really have no clue what life is like outside of academia. Most of them are simply parroting what has been drilled into them by attendings.
When you are finished school and you are practicing optometry, the fact is is that there are going to be ophthalmologists in the area where you practice who are anti-optometry and who will use every opportunity they can find to run you, your practice, or optometry in general into the ground. It's not that common, but it happens. Getting worked up over it accomplishes nothing.
Same thing with primary care doctors. There are going to be plenty of PCPs who will simply not refer to you and if any of their patients shows up in your office, they will immediately phone up that patient and convince them that only an ophthalmologist should be treating their pink eye or checking out their diabetes. Again...rare....but it happens.
But you are going to find out who these people are very very quickly and the fact is, you simply don't refer patients to them.
There are plenty of ophthalmologists and primary care/internal medicine types out there who will be comfortable with your abilities and who will gladly work with you. You will find out very quickly who those people are as well. Seek out those people and develop relationships with them and ignore the bull**** that the other groups throw your way. It will not help your practice or your blood pressure to get down into the mud with those people.
When you are finished school and you are practicing optometry, the fact is is that there are going to be ophthalmologists in the area where you practice who are anti-optometry and who will use every opportunity they can find to run you, your practice, or optometry in general into the ground. It's not that common, but it happens. Getting worked up over it accomplishes nothing.
Same thing with primary care doctors. There are going to be plenty of PCPs who will simply not refer to you and if any of their patients shows up in your office, they will immediately phone up that patient and convince them that only an ophthalmologist should be treating their pink eye or checking out their diabetes. Again...rare....but it happens.
But you are going to find out who these people are very very quickly and the fact is, you simply don't refer patients to them.
There are plenty of ophthalmologists and primary care/internal medicine types out there who will be comfortable with your abilities and who will gladly work with you. You will find out very quickly who those people are as well. Seek out those people and develop relationships with them and ignore the bull**** that the other groups throw your way. It will not help your practice or your blood pressure to get down into the mud with those people.
