Optometrist job description
1,489 verified openings in Physicians & Advanced Practice
An optometrist diagnoses glaucoma and color blindness, removes foreign bodies from the eye, prescribes and fits eyeglasses and contact lenses, and, where state law permits, prescribes medication to treat eye disease. Patients having cataract surgery or laser vision correction get their pre-operative and post-operative care here, and anything needing more medical treatment goes to an ophthalmologist. BLS counted 42,790 optometrists in May 2025. The median was $136,570, and the range around it is enormous for a single licensed profession: $74,870 at the tenth percentile against $202,180 at the ninetieth.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
The examination carries the job: observation, instruments, and pharmaceutical agents used to establish acuity, perception, focus, and coordination, and to find disease. Turning those results into a treatment plan comes next. Prescribing, supplying, fitting, and adjusting eyeglasses, contact lenses, and other vision aids weighs the same as prescribing medication where state law allows it. Counseling patients on lens care, visual hygiene, lighting, and safety carries real weight, and the lighter tasks are vision therapy and low-vision rehabilitation.
Common Skills and Technologies
Science and persuasion both appear on this record's skill list, a pairing that turns up on few other clinical occupations. The everyday ones are reading comprehension, active listening, and critical thinking, with writing and speaking close behind. The hot technologies are business tools rather than clinical ones: Intuit QuickBooks, Microsoft Access, Excel, SQL Server, and Word. Clinical instruments do not register as technology in this dataset, and the remaining software categories cover scheduling, medical records, and accounting.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Only three titles are reported for the whole occupation: Optometrist, Optometry Doctor (OD), and Therapeutic Optometrist, the last pointing back at the state-by-state limits on prescribing. The degree behind all three is the same, a doctorate held by about 95 percent of those surveyed, with the rest reporting a first professional degree.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1041.00 Optometrists, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1041.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1041, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291041.htm.