5 things I wish I knew before optometry

Ebiye is a qualified Optometrist. In her first video with us at Healthjobs.co.uk, she shares the 5 things she wishes she knew before she started optometry. If you're looking to get into optometry, then this video will help you to know what to expect!

Hey guys, it’s Beedie, the channel is MissBeedie and this video is sponsored by Healthjobs.co.uk!

In this video I am going to be talking about five things I wish I knew before optometry.

Now some of them might surprise you, and some of them I probably should have known - if I was a serious person I would have known them before!

Before you read on, if you're thinking about getting into optometry, then take a look at this blog on how to qualify for and find a job as an optometrist.

The content

There is so much to know.

I thought it was just going to be eyes and how big they are… it shouldn’t take that long, it will be a quick three years and I’ll be out.

But there’s a lot of stuff to cover.

There’s a lot of things that you think aren’t relevant as well, so there’s lots of physics in the first year and lots of maths, there’s lots of pharmacology - it makes sense to know about drugs, but there’s lots, lots, lots which, now that I’ve been in practice for three years I feel like is relevant but at the time you’re thinking, why am I learning about this?!

There was one module on the digestive system and I was like, how is this relevant?!

Exams

The next thing is the amount of exams and practicals that we had.

So at the end of the semester with have exams and we’ve always had lots of those.

We’ve had loads of practicals throughout the year too, loads and loads and loads of them too.

Another thing in the same topic was negative marking. I didn’t realise that multiple choice questions could have negative marks, so that's to prevent you from guessing and stuff, I guess we all did!

So negative marking is a thing to bear in mind.

Contact lenses

Before optometry I did not realise how much there was to know about contact lenses! I thought contact lenses were just something you sort of chuck in your eye and leave them, but there’s so much to know.

So much research has gone into them and it’s really important, they’re so much more important than you would have anticipated.

The pre-reg year

If I was a serious person I probably would have known about this, so this is most likely my fault! I didn’t realise I had to do a pre-reg year until I was in second year, and we started talks about companies coming in and telling us about their pre-reg programs.

If you’re not sure what pre reg is, I’ve got a video on that, you can check that out.

But yeah, I didn’t know that was a thing, and I remember everyone was applying and I was just like, what’s going on?

That was probably my own fault but now you’ve watched this you’ll know there is a pre-reg year.

There’s a variety of career options

The other thing I wish I knew was there’s a variety optometry jobs.

There’s research, there’s hospital work, there’s independent practice, there’s stuff like that.

There’s more options than I thought there would be which is good because sometimes I thought, this is going to be my life, I’m going to be stuck in a shop all day!

So there are more options than you would have thought!

But yeah, these are five things I wish I knew before optometry, which now you know hopefully before optometry.

If there’s any optometrists out there and you’ve got some more things to say then leave it in the comments section below!

If you’re thinking of doing optometry don’t let these things discourage you from doing optometry, just go in there knowing them, which I wish I did!

Any questions, any comments, leave them down below and I’ll see you guys in the next video!

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