Clinical relevance: An assessment of the total number, demographics and geographic distribution of optometrists in Australia may inform policy to address the maldistribution of the workforce.
Background: Concerns have been expressed about the growth of the optometry workforce in the context of, in the last decade, the establishment of four new optometry programs in addition to the three long-standing programs.
Methods: This paper analysed data obtained from the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency about registered optometrists during the period 1 January 2012 to 31 December 2019. The de-identified dataset included information about registered optometrists in Australia: their first year of registration, gender, year of birth (in five-year bands), optometry qualification, registration type including endorsement for therapeutic practice and the postcode of the principal place of practice.
Results: Data for 6,596 registrants were obtained over the study period during which the number of female optometrists increased significantly. The age profile of the profession shifted, with younger age bands becoming a significantly greater proportion of the profession. The majority of the profession comprised optometrists with a qualification from one of the three long-standing Australian optometry programs. Graduates of those programs accounted for 75.1% of registered optometrists in 2019, while 14.3% held a qualification from an overseas institution. The proportion of optometrists practising in major Australian cities was greater than the proportion of the population in those locations. A concomitant low proportion of optometrists, relative to population size, was found in regional and remote areas.
Conclusion: Optometrists practising in Australia can be generalised as mostly female graduates of one of the three long-standing optometry programs holding general registration with a therapeutic endorsement, and with a principal place of practice located in a major Australian city. A significant maldistribution of the workforce was found that did not change significantly during the study period.
Keywords: Australia; geographic distribution; optometrist; workforce.