Originally Posted by
optical24/7
Sorry, but you are wrong thinking “our leaders never wanted to progress our profession “. The vast, vast majority of Opticians can look in a mirror and see why we haven’t progressed. How many can say they’ve contributed cash to the OAA, ( the only association that has a legislative division to help us nationally on state legislation). How many Opticians join their state societies? How many have gone to their own state capitals and discussed their professional issues with their state senator or representative? Even recently when states started eliminating licensure in their own state....Did they even contacted their own representatives to voice their opinion on the subject? ( once again, the vast majority did nothing...)
I’ll use Texas as an example. We worked hard, many years, to get our state to create a “Voluntary Registration “. We finally got it! We knew we would have an almost impossible time getting full licensure up front, but we felt it was a strong start that could lead to mandatory licensure. A few years ago, our state legislature voted it out of existence. Why?...
Out of over 2,000 ABO certified Opticians in our state, less that 40 registered! That’s right, a whopping 38 Opticians...(6 of which we’re myself and my employees!)
Optician apathy has been rampant since some of us broke away and created Optometry and got licensure passed in all 50 states (starting around 100 years ago. In case some weren’t aware of, Optometry was started by refracting Opticians.) The rest of us were cool with doing...nothing...right up to today...
So here we are, being legislated out of relevances. Some of us put a lot of time, money, travel and tears to help elevate our chosen profession, with little to no help from our peers. And frankly, I don’t think any Optician can b!tch about where we are today if they’ve sat on the bench their entire career.
Wisconsin ABO, the above was not directed towards you personally, but to all the Opticians out there that sat with the “vast, vast majority “...
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