Establishment and review of educational programs to train optometrists in laser procedures and injections
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Current scope of practice for optometrists in many countries include topical and oral medication with injectable and lasers being added more recently to scope in the United States (US), Canada, the United Kingdom (UK) and New Zealand (NZ). This expanded scope of optometric practice improves access to eyecare and is critical since an ageing population with a higher prevalence of vision disorders and higher healthcare costs looms. Expanded scope has been shown alongside strong safety records. This review paper aims to investigate the expansion of optometric scope of practice regarding lasers and injectables in the US, UK, Canada, Australia and NZ. The design and delivery of post-graduation educational programs, curriculum frameworks for advanced skills and the metrics of laser procedures performed by optometrists will be discussed. The State of Oklahoma in the US was first to authorise optometrists to use lasers and injectables in 1988. As of 2024, qualified optometrists in the UK, in twelve states in the US, and specialist optometrists in NZ perform laser procedures. However, lasers and injectables are not within the current scope of optometric practice in Australia and Canada. Training courses such as Northeastern State University Oklahoma College of Optometry Advanced Procedures Course and Laser Procedures Course have been successfully designed and implemented in the US to train graduate optometrists. The outcomes of over 146,403 laser procedures performed by optometrists across the US have shown only two negative outcomes, equating to 0.001%. These metrics outline the effectiveness of these procedures performed by optometrists and show strong support for future optometric scope expansion. Eye health professionals, relevant educational institutions, advocacy groups, and policymakers are called upon to work collaboratively to expand the optometric scope of practice globally.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.009 | 0.030 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.008 | 0.008 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.002 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".