Background: The Place Model was developed in order to conceptualize the various roles and career pathways of the teaching profession. It can be used to evaluate long-term professional career trajectories and to encourage the student-teacher to visualize their future personal and professional development. Methods: In the present study, the Place Model has been applied to the Optometric profession. The four categories of the place model have been discussed in terms of Optometry and a survey of undergraduate Optometrists highlights the perception of the model amongst pre-qualified professionals. Results: The majority of participants placed qualified optometrists in the Professional area on the Place Model (87%,
n = 88) with the remainder placing qualified optometrists in the De-Professional area on the Place Model (13%, n = 13). There was no statistically significant difference between responses from male and female participants (t-test,
p = 0.38). There was also no statistically significant difference between responses from participants in year 1, 2 or 3 of their undergraduate program (one-way analysis of variance [ANOVA],
p = 0.10). Conclusion: The Place Model may be an opportunity to discuss with Optometry students their future career pathways and to ensure that we maintain a highly skilled and caring profession that provides high quality eyecare for the public.
View Full-Text
This is an open access article distributed under the
Creative Commons Attribution License which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.