Jobs / Healthcare / 29-1041.00
Optometrists
Diagnose, manage, and treat conditions and diseases of the human eye and visual system. Examine eyes and visual system, diagnose problems or impairments, prescribe corrective lenses, and provide treatment. May prescribe therapeutic drugs to treat specific eye conditions.
- US jobs
- 42,790
- Median wage
- $136,570 a year
- Job family
- Healthcare
Can agents do the work of optometrists?
We read the evidence at the level of the job family, Healthcare:
- Task levelPartialOne benchmark, from early 2025. On Stanford's MedAgentBench, where agents do clinical tasks in a simulated electronic health record, the best recorded model completes 69.7% of tasks (Claude 3.5 Sonnet v2). It has no maintained leaderboard, so newer models are not measured. No benchmark in our collection tests work with patients.
- Project levelPartialOnly adjacent evidence. GDPval includes nurses among its 44 occupations. OpenAI reports that GPT-5.5's deliverables won or tied against professionals' work in 84.9% of comparisons across all occupations. No benchmark in our collection tests clinical work over days, such as managing a patient's care.
Benchmarks for the job family
These cover work in healthcare, not always this occupation's tasks.
- 1846 EloClaude Opus 5.5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Default Fallback) · 23 Sep 2026Unrated
Typical tasks
From O*NET 31.0. Core tasks first. Few of these tasks have a benchmark today.
- Examine eyes, using observation, instruments, and pharmaceutical agents, to determine visual acuity and perception, focus, and coordination and to diagnose diseases and other abnormalities, such as glaucoma or color blindness.
- Analyze test results and develop a treatment plan.
- Prescribe, supply, fit and adjust eyeglasses, contact lenses, and other vision aids.
- Prescribe medications to treat eye diseases if state laws permit.
- Educate and counsel patients on contact lens care, visual hygiene, lighting arrangements, and safety factors.
- Remove foreign bodies from the eye.
- Provide patients undergoing eye surgeries, such as cataract and laser vision correction, with pre- and post-operative care.
- Consult with and refer patients to ophthalmologist or other health care practitioner if additional medical treatment is determined necessary.
- Prescribe therapeutic procedures to correct or conserve vision.
- Provide vision therapy and low-vision rehabilitation.
Other job titles for this occupation (3)
Optometrist · Optometry Doctor (OD) · Therapeutic Optometrist