Opthalmic Nurses
Another in our series looking at the different types of nurses that there are. As an opthalmic nurse you’d look after those with diseases of the eyes: things like glaucoma, macular degeneration and other causes of blindness and also to people undergoing eye surgery: from the most basic things like cataracts and Lasik to vastly more advanced things like retinoblastomas. But the important thing is that this is one of the types of nursing that concentrates on one set of organs. You can then specialize further by combining this with working with one group of people (the old say, or children) or in a specific setting (a hospital, a specialist clinic etc.)
I think this is another of those areas of nursing where you’d want to come from the more empathic end of the spectrum of our EQSQ personality tests. For a large percentage of the patients that you treat will be those going blind from one problem or another and humans tend not to react to that all that well.
The training is at first like that for other nursing specialties. You’ll need to take the license exam and before they’ll let you do that you must have taken a full four year college degree, a two year one or a one year Diploma program. The military is also a good place to get this type of training. But you’ll find that the more senior positions, management and so on, are reserved for those with the full college degree. There are, if you want to start work as soon as possible, a number of conversion programs that enable to upgrade the Diploma or junior college degree to a full one.
October 16th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
There’s another job to consider here: ophthalmic medical technologists. While not nurses, they assist the ophthalmologist when caring for patients. Their duties include measuring glasses, performing exams, assisting in eye surgery, and offering patient education.
Here is an article about this field: http://www.startribune.com/1757/story/1292083.html. According to the piece, ophthalmic medical technologists can make around $20/hour and most often work 8-5. This latter part is what I find most appealing. While it works for some, I personally wouldn’t like the odd hours most medical employees must work.
Personally, I’ve always fantasized about working in such an office. It reeks with quaintness. Of course there’s more to it than finding glasses for people (eye surgery, I suppose, isn’t all that quaint). But whenever I’ve walked into an eye doctor office, there’s this calmness and sense of peace in the air, as if those working there are aware of its quaintness, aware it’s a nice job, and therefore are laid back and content-seeming. And then there’s soft music in the background, cheesy but homey decorating, nice old people all about. Some dental offices pull this off, too. It’s like working at grandma’s house.