A Day In The Life Of An Optometrist

Optometry has caught my attention ever since my sister was first seen for vision problems at a very young age. The first time I saw the anatomy of the human eye, I was fascinated. It fascinated me to know that the human eye is the only part of our body that is connected to the brain by only one nerve. The human eye interests me a lot, therefore I would enjoy working in the Optometry field to help people that have eye problems because, to me, the eye is an important part of our body that helps us view the many wonders of the world. 

As soon as I knew that I wanted Optometry to be my future career, I knew I wanted to open up my own office one day because I feel that with your own practice, you are able to build better relationships with your patients and you are able to have more control of your personal life. Therefore knowing first hand, from an Optometrist, what the benefits are of owning your own practice, how the office operates and also of what his day consists of, was very helpful.

Before choosing to be an Optometrist I did not know what field I wanted to get into as a doctor. A lot of people would tell me that the only down side of being a doctor is that they are usually always on call and most of them don’t get to spend a lot of time with their family. I always knew that I wanted to have a family and be able to spend as much time with them as possible and not get interrupted during a holiday dinner to go attend patients. Being an Optometrist and having your own business provides those abilities. The benefits that come along with having your own office is that you can create your own schedule. With his own practice, Dr. V is able to create his own schedule and take vacations whenever he wants in order to spend time with his family. His office is located in So. Cal and half of his family are residents of San Francisco. Being able to create his own schedule is great because he is able to come to San Francisco during any holiday to spend time with his family.

Being an Optometrist and owning your own practice also comes with other benefits as well, one of them being that how the patients are scheduled and how much time you spend with them is entirely up to you. His day begins at 9 AM and he sees many different types of patients, varying in age and each one having different types of needs for their eyes. For regular exams Dr. V is checking for cataracts, retinal tears, macular degeneration, glaucoma, lazy eye, and evidence of systemic diseases such as diabetes and hypertension. He treats patients for all of the diseases mentioned above and when there are certain cases that he can not treat he refers patients to specialists. Throughout the day he also treats patients for contact lenses and also writes prescriptions for glasses for each of his patients when they are required. After he is done examining the patients, the Opticians will help the patients fit frames and then send the frames with the prescription to a lab so that they can fit them in for the patient. Dr. V has different closing times for different days. He recommends many of his patients to get checked annually in order to detect any type of disease early before it gets any worse. Also depending on the ages of the patients, older patients that are more prone to acquiring diseases are required to get their eyes checked more frequently then younger patients. 

After finding out what it would be like to be an Optometrist with an owned practice, I realized how much I wanted to become an Optometrist and also own my practice. Becoming an Optometrist is something I look forward to everyday. I am excited to one day be able to help people with their vision. Even though I do not wear glasses and have not gone through the experience of having bad eye sight I know a lot of people that have bad eye sight including really close family members. Because of their experiences I know the importance of having good eye sight and having contact lenses or glasses in order to correct your eye sight if its not well. The thought of helping people to see better is really fascinating to me. I'm excited to see how the experience will be of being able to work with people's eyes and also being able to have my own practice where I can create my own schedule and also have the capability of building good relationships with my patients.