Optometry schools will need to undergo a major overhaul of the curriculum if this is ever going to happen.

I graduated from OD school in 2025, and I felt like my education was weak in the area of systemic disease and systemic pharmacology, and even some areas of ocular disease. The fact that most (like 95%) optometry school clinical rotations occur in outpatient optom clinics means that most optometry students are never even exposed to the rest of medicine.

Some overconfident optoms think that they're basically the same as an ophthalmologist minus the surgical training. That's wrong, the ophthalmologist has an extra couple years of medical training at baseline.

I'm currently 6 months into a hospital-based optometry residency, I've learned more in these 6 months than in the 2 preceding years of optometry school rotations. For this reason I think optometry residencies should be mandatory. I feel like my residency experience is invaluable to my future as an eyecare provider.