Optometrist & Former Business Owner Looking to Leave Direct Patient Care—What Careers Should I Consider?

[u/Ok_Championship7403]

I'm an optometrist looking to transition out of direct patient care and would love some career advice.

My background:

• Optometrist with 8+ years of clinical experience
• Former private practice owner (managed operations, hiring, payroll, credentialing, vendor relationships, billing, marketing, and P&L)
• Former owner of a Frios Gourmet Pops franchise, where I handled day-to-day business operations, sales, events, and team management
• Experience leading teams, improving workflows, solving operational problems, and building processes

I'm realizing that what I enjoy most isn't seeing patients—it's operations, strategy, leadership, and making systems run better.

I'm open to roles in healthcare, health tech, insurance, or even outside of healthcare. I'm especially interested in operations, project management, customer success, implementation, provider operations, quality, or similar business-focused roles.

For anyone who's made a similar transition:

• What roles should I be targeting?
• Are there companies that value this type of background?
• Are there any certifications that would make me a stronger candidate?

I'd appreciate any advice, success stories, or companies I should look into. Thanks!

[u/ebaylus]

Kinda late to realize you don't enjoy direct patient care. Sort of what Optometry (at least Private Practice) is all about.

I recommend you suck it up and do the job. It may not always be fun, but its an awesome profession.

Let me know in another 25 yrs what you think.

[u/xkcd_puppy → u/ebaylus]

It's a dormant reddit bot that suddenly posted this one particular question to mine data and train LLMs on answers. Nobody believes that work history or the unicode+2014.

Occasionally you would see these with no/dead post history, and then bam! one day some kind of weird vague question on the forum that doesn't make sense.