It’s an honour for us that the Optometrist as a health care professionals included under ‘THE NATIONAL COMMISSION FOR ALLIED AND HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONS ACT, 2021’. Ministry of Health and Family Welfare defines, we the
“Optometrists are primary health care practitioners of the eye and visual system who provide comprehensive eye and vision care, which includes refraction and dispensing, detection/diagnosis and co-management of disease in the eye and the rehabilitation of conditions of the visual system”.
Optometrists can be into the public health domain as health care personal which provide vision care services like prescribing glasses, contact lens, provide comprehensive low vision care services, vision therapy etc. and can also provide extended role in various eye anomalies and competence in therapeutic, diagnostic, curative, preventive and/or rehabilitative interventions.
Preventable blindness is one of our most tragic and wasteful global problems. Cataract; trachoma; onchocerciasis; childhood blindness, refractive error and low vision can be categorised preventable or avoidable blindness.
Visually disabling refractive error affects a significant proportion of the global population even Bihar is also a part, occurring in both genders, in all ages and in all ethnic groups. The most common cause of visual impairment, and the second leading cause of treatable blindness is uncorrected refractive error. The most common causes of blindness and visual impairment, it is also the easiest to Cure, and Refractive error can be simply diagnosed, measured and corrected.
Apart from this, we optometrist can diagnosis, manage and refer systemic manifestations such hypertension, Diabetics mellitus, and others that are often detected, early management could be given or proper referral could avoid retinopathy or serious conditions. Pre- surgical workup or post-surgical care, optometrist could be a hand to main line of treatment.
The day to day tasks of optometrist are quite varying and demanding: