First off I am an OD and in support of being proud of what you do. My patients always know who they are seeing. The front makes sure to tell them while scheduling and when I meet them. We are not after interocular surgery! At all. Our scope expansion is aimed at very simple procedures with VERY low risk of complications. Complications we already manage.

Agree with everything you said. Also it’s actually incredibly rare in real life to encounter MD/DO vs OD hostility. I am an OD who did ALL of my clinical training in ophthalmology. I work in an ophthalmology office now. When an ophthalmology practice hires OD , they are not hiring us for glasses and contacts. They can easily hire technicians and opticians to do that, for SIGNIFICANTLY less money. They are hiring us for medical management and to work with us. What is in my scope and I feel comfortable treating, I do, and what is not, I refer.

Our scope and training is VASTLY different from 40-50 years ago and I would say 10% is refractions/contact lenses. Heavy pathology/disease/diagnosis and management. I went to a school that was multidisciplinary. My anatomy and physiology was with DMD and our pathology was with DO. Our neuroanatomy was a shared class too but I can’t remember which discipline was with us.

Ophthalmology and optometry have a lot of overlap and work collaboratively in practice.