The service range of an optometrist

Individuals always have good reasons to visit an optometrist. Sometimes they can not look and read the bill boards arching up high over the streets, and sometimes the words in a book burst into globules that fade and blur. A more dangerous situation because of poor vision is running into the street light. All these situations require people to drop in at the optometrist’s office.

An optometrist is one of the members on the list of medical professions. This occupation along with ophthalmologists can be both called eye doctors. Optometrists are more general than ophthalmologists. An ophthalmologist covers a wider range of eye problems from eye diseases, injury diagnosis, and prescription eyewear to eye surgeries. Compared to an optometrist, a dispensing optician can only fit the contact lenses or eyeglasses according to the prescription made by an optometrist or ophthalmologist.

In general practice, optometrists can deal with nearly all issues described in ophthalmologists except for eye surgeries. One exception is that an optometrist can provide postoperative and preoperative care to all cataract patients after a cataract surgery. Serving children and adults, an optometrist can easily detect or diagnose common vision problems such as nearsightedness and farsightedness using a set of lenses. The precise powers of the eyes can be determined. According to this he can prescribe appropriate eyeglasses or contact lenses that offer vision correction. What’s more, eye tests performed by an optometrist can also check patients’ depth of vision, color perception, the focusing ability and vision coordinates.

An optometrist running private practice needs to keep electronic records, hire employees and prepare the patient’s base. People can even get services from an optometrist at weekends. According to the American Optometric Association Survey, an optometrist works for about forty-nine hours every week. They will still reschedule the evening or weekend events for the sake of their patients.