Optometric Care: It's Changing Scope.

Displaying one of nature's most evident signs of good health, optometry is growing, expanding its borders. Education, new technology, and the use of mydriatics have combined to greatly improve diagnostic capabilities. Methods of treatment are also changing as state practice acts are amended to allow the use of therapeutic agents. Concomitant with these changes has been an evolution within our legal system by which the profession's standard of care has become increasingly indistinguishable from that held by ophthalmology. Ironically, optometry initially sought and gained its professional identity through refracting opticians arguing that it was not a branch of medicine.