See, I strongly disagree with that. I can understand why you might feel that way given that you're still in school, and I'm sure the school has got you all revved up but a few points here:
1) Scope of practice makes not a lick of difference in the long term success of optometry. I have gone over that dozens of times. You can be trained up the wazoo and have the widest scope of practice possible, but if you can't get paid for it, it is of absolutely zero value to the profession. "All informed optometry faithfuls" should know that the success of optometry has almost nothing to do with scope of practice.
2) I also don't agree that putting heavy value on disease and medical related courses is good for the long term viability of the profession. Am I saying that ODs shouldn't be prescribing pataday, or managing glaucoma? No....of course not. But it's time for a reality check. Doing more and more disease management sounds fun and sexy and "doctorly" but the reality of it is is that you're talking about essentially duplicating services with ophthalmology. Considering that there is no access problem with respect to ophthalmological care, it makes little sense for ODs to move aggressively into this area, not because we "can't" or would be incompetent at it, but because it makes no economic sense to do so. The future success of optometry is not linked to us being more "like them."
3) Also understand that once you get outside of your academid cocoon, 90% of your patients are going to seek your advise for vision and refractive care, not for disease management. I own a private practice that is about as "medical" as an optometric practice can get and I would say that it's about 10-15% of my patients who present for "medical management" of some sort. Their entering complaint is almost universally vision or refractive in nature.
Again, this is an unwise move. More disease management simply makes us more "like them" and no matter what happens, optometry is always going to be regarded as 2nd class citizens in that arena. There is little that can be done about that so what we should be doing is accentuating our strengths.
Sadly, most of those people are ivory tower academics or people who work in tertiary referal centers. The majority of them have no clue that goes on in 95% of optometry out "on the street." Most of them have never had to make a payroll, or deal with lab vendors. Most of them have never had to hire or fire staff. Most of them have never had to chase down denied insurance claims. Most of them have never had to get an office off the ground, and keep it off the ground. As such, they essentially don't know schitt from shine-ola about what the profession needs to keep it viable.
And please don't take this as a personal attack. I understand where you're coming from and believe me, I've been there too. But the reality of it all will hit you soon enough. Hopefully not too hard.