There are three main types of eye physicians of Austin.
Optometrist
The first type of eye physician is an optometrist. This is going to be the main doctor of the visual system that includes your eyes. This means that they will be able to provide a comprehensive eye exam for you. This person will also be able to deal with all of your vision care services. The services will include refracting and dispensing, detection of any type of disease that can happen to your eye. This also means that the doctor will help with the rehabilitation of any of these conditions that happen to your eyes.
Most of the time, this doctor is going to be the doctor that you go see when you need an eye exam. This is because they will be able to write a prescription for you if you need corrective lenses like glasses or contacts. In other words, the optometrist will be the doctor who is conducting the eye exam for you and then they will prescribe the corrective lenses that you will need to make sure that you are going to have a better vision while you are wearing the glasses or contacts. This doctor will also figure if there is surgery needed in order to fix the vision problem that you might be having. There is a good chance that this problem could be outside of their scope of knowledge, so they will need to refer to an ophthalmologist, who can do the surgery for them.
Optician
The second type of eye physician is an optician. This person is an expert or specialist at making sure that the glasses or contacts that the optometrist gave you fit you properly. They will be the person that will fill the prescription of the glasses or contacts from the optometrist. This means that they will be the person is making the lenses that you might need in order to correct the vision problems that you are having.
After the optometrist is done with your eye exam, then you will be escorted to the optician that will help you to select the frames and lens that will work best for you. More than likely, the education of the optician will be a one or two-year degree or certification. This is one of the reasons that they will not be the person who is doing the exam for you.
Ophthalmologist
The third type of eye physician is an ophthalmologist. This is a medical doctor who is going to specialize in every aspect of caring for your eye including the diagnosis, management, and surgery of any type of ocular disease or disorder that a person can have. Since they are going to be the one who is doing the surgery on you, they will have the most education compared to the other eye doctors. They will have at least 4 years of medical school, some residency or internship training, and an additional 4 years of the postgraduate training in the ophthalmology.
This doctor will also treat you if you have some of the common eye conditions like astigmatism, nearsightedness, and farsightedness. This is because you are going to need to wear special types of glasses or contacts if you have any of these conditions. They can even provide you vision therapy services that you might need after you have had surgery. They can also prescribe you any medications that you might need if you are suffering from something can be cured through the medications.
These are the top three types of eye doctor physicians that you might see when you have vision problems.