Optometry

Education in India, Career in India: Optometry

Introduction:

Looking for a Career Options as an optometry ? This section features optometry as a career options, elaborated with reference to the job profile, personality traits required, the courses and training involved, premier institutions and future prospects.

Optometry is related to function, structure and working of the human eye. This optometry is a health profession is concerned with examination, diagnosis and treatment of eyes, optical symptoms, specially related to visual, refractive errors and correction, using lenses and the other optical aids. This career is very challenging and achieves personal growth, respect of community and also offers the flexibility of job, financial success and number of opportunities.

Optometric physicians or optometrists are the initially health and eye care professionals and concerned with the vision care. These physicians are determines the refractive error and suggests appropriate correction. The job includes eye testing, Diagnosing visual problems, vision and orthoptics training, partial site and patient's optometric counseling, color blindness, designing spectacles, fitting spectacles, searching hereditary vision defect, low vision aids and contact lens.

Optometry goes hand in hand with the Ophthalmology during treatment of visual disorder but optometrists shouldn't confuse with the dispensing opticians or ophthalmologists

Personality Traits & skills:

Optometrist should have patience, confidence and manual dexterity and these are the important skills for this field. For becoming licensed optometrist, required characteristics are mechanical aptitude, coordination and good vision. The qualities in successful optometrist are self discipline, work ethics characterized by dedication and persistence a disposition to serve others, and ability to deal diplomatically with the patients.

Courses/Training :Optometric physician needs a degree of optometry and this requires 4 years for the completion at the accredited optometry school. Requirement for getting admission to the optometry schools contains college courses in mathematics, English, chemistry, physics and biology. Science background is very important. Most of the applicants for optometry are from science background such as chemistry or biology as undergraduates. Competition is very high for the admission to the optometry school. Optometry admission test is given by the applicant for measuring the scientific comprehension and academic ability. For this reason many applicants give the test in junior year of the college and give the tests again for increasing the score. While some of applicants accepts school after three years of the school.

Top Colleges in India for Optometry:

SRM University, Kanchipuram

Sharda University, Noida

Manipal Institute of Technology, MIT- Manipal

Galgotias University, Noida

West Bengal University of Technology, Kolkata

Placements And Prospects :

The students of ESO absorbed clinical optometrist in the institutions such as Sankara Nethralaya and other popular and renowned hospitals in the India after completion of course.

ESO students may also work in the Indian companies or multinational companies such as Bausch & Lomb, Essilor, Johnson & Johnson, Lawrence & Mayo, etc.

They work as Researchers, lecturers, and the Heads of optometry associations and colleges in India and in abroad. In different parts of the country, they also do optometry practice independently.

Challenges:

More than 300 million people worldwide are blind or vision impaired simply because they haven't had an eye exam and a pair of glasses. Imagine a day without your glasses — you might not be able to drive to work, watch a movie or see your child play soccer. In the developing world, where more than 90% of blindness occurs, life without sight can be a death sentence. Those who are "blind," even if it's just due to refractive error, cannot earn an income for supporting themselves or their families — leading to poverty, additional health problems, starvation and an early death.

Besides the sheer magnitude of unnecessary blindness due to refractive error, charitable organizations, such as Optometry Giving Sight (OGS), also face the following challenges:

1. Securing funding sources in challenging global economy;

2. ensuring sustainability of all projects so that vision care isn't just short-term, but permanent;

3. building partnerships with like-minded organizations — a collaborative approach around the world making best use of organizational expertise and location to ensure the problem is solved efficiently and economically;

4. working with national and local governments to get their buy-in and support. This is especially challenging considering political environments in the developing world.

For optometrists, these challenges hit close to home. Correcting refractive errors and providing primary eye care are our bread and butter. In today's troubled global economy, how can we give sight to 300 million people who are less fortunate? How can we, as eyecare professionals, enact a permanent sustainable solution that helps people thousands of miles away?

Remuneration:

Optometry is one of the top ten income-earning professions in the country today. An optometrists earning is determined by several factors including coverage under provincial medical programs, fee schedules, hours worked, practice location, services provided and patient population.

The initial salary of an optometrist in a government firm is Rs. 8000/- or above plus other allowance. Salaried optometrists tend to earn more initially than optometrists who set up their own practices. However, ultimately those in private practice once established usually earn more.

Bibliography: "Maa Foundation - Knowledge Is Growth." Maafoundation.org. N.p., 2017. Web. 1 Sept. 2017.

Bibliography: "Education In India - Schools And Colleges In India." Indicareer.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 1 Sept. 2017.

Bibliography: "U.S. Bureau Of Labor Statistics." Bls.gov. N.p., 2017. Web. 1 Sept. 2017.

Bibliography: "Salary Of Optometrists | Optometry Careers And Courses In India." career.webindia123.com. N.p., 2017. Web. 29 Sept. 2017.