Exploring New Paths to Reveal Today’s General Practice of Optometry

Abstract

At the first American Optometric Association Summit meeting (Optometry 2020) in August 2005, Linda Casser, OD, gave an outstanding presentation on “The NBEO Examination Restructuring Project,” a survey that the National Board of Examiners in Optometry (NBEO) had commissioned to be carried out by Mort Soroka, PhD, at the State University of New York College of Optometry. This survey was designed to gather data to help the National Board Examinations reflect the current state of primary care practice within optometry. The vitality of our profession builds on ongoing education, discovery, and advocacy for better patient care. Collectively, our national organizations, schools, and colleges stand at the forefront of these efforts. The NBEO provides the testing arm for state optometry boards, assuring the public of the competency of optometric practitioners entering licensed practice. Optometry and Optometry and Vision Science, the journals of the American Optometric Association (AOA) and the American Academy of Optometry (AAO), respectively, promulgate advances and activities in the profession, which can lead to better patient care. This includes reporting discoveries that lead both to improving curricula for training in our schools and colleges and to advanced continuing education for practitioners. In what might be considered an historic move we, as the Editors from both Optometry and Optometry and Vision Science, saw an opportunity to reflect our collegiality and common and overlapping purposes for optometry. So we decided to do two things that heretofore have not been done. The first was to jointly publish the findings of this survey in both journals so our respective memberships could appreciate the current state of the profession as perceived by the NBEO. The second was to jointly write this editorial introducing the NBEO-sponsored study, because both the AOA and the AAO do, in fact, represent the profession of optometry both politically and academically. The NBEO-sponsored study, reported in our journals, emphasizes the importance of basing entry-level examinations for licensure in a profession on current practice patterns and expectations. This is not the first time, nor the last, that the NBEO has gone to the practicing profession as a basis for its construction of its entry-level examination; it does this on a regular basis. The Soroka et al. study reflects the general practice of primary care optometry today. It provides interesting snapshots of the actual practice activities of primary care optometrists in the early 21st century. The study results contrast quite remarkably with snapshots that might have been taken a few decades ago, and it reflects a profession that continues to expand its eye and vision care professional services. No doubt, snapshots at 2020 will look very different; certainly, the broad constituency input at the Optometry 2020 meetings in Dallas over the past year suggests this. The NBEO-sponsored study, based on encounter survey forms completed for patients seen during a 2-day period, reflects the responses of approximately 500 general practice primary care optometrists randomly sampled nationwide. Optometrists who specialized and did not classify themselves as general practitioners were excluded from the study. This resulted in over 11,000 primary care patient encounters from rural, urban, and suburban practice settings in very different geographic areas. The information gathered clearly shows that ocular disease treatment and management is an integral part of today’s general practice of optometry. The study also provides insights into the most common diagnostic and therapeutic procedures performed, medications prescribed, and referrals made in general optometry practices. The individual journals that we represent always strive for excellence in presenting peer-reviewed information not only to our profession, but also to the many outside of optometry who read our journals. As reflected in the Soroka et al. article, our journals are more complementary than one might appreciate at first blush. Just as other editors of healthcare journals sometimes find it appropriate to publish joint statements, it is expected that this editorial will open doors for further collaboration. Anthony J. Adams Berkeley, California Editor-in-Chief, Optometry and Vision Science Paul B. Freeman Sewickley, Pennsylvania Editor-in-Chief, Optometry