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The Assistant Level Exam

Requirements to be able to take the assistant level examination:

We are assuming that you are not currently attending, or you are not interested in attending an accredited school for ophthalmic assistants.  If you are interested, please call  the Joint Commission at 800-284-3937 for more information.

The following requirements are for those going the on-the-job-training route.

• You must have a high school diploma

• You must have worked at least 2000 hours under the supervision of an ophthalmologist.  This is equivalent to one year of full time work.

• You must be sponsored by an ophthalmologist who can attest to your competence in all of the assistant level content areas.

• You must complete an approved independent study course.  In the U.S., this is provided by the American Academy of Ophthalmology.  If you live in Canada, go to the Joint Commission website for more information.  To find the AAO course, follow this link.  If the link does not work, go to the AAO website (aao.org), then go to the AAO store, then search for "ophthalmic medical assisting".

If you are not currently working for an ophthalmologist, and you want to get into the field via the on-the-job-training route, these requirement may seem like a Catch 22.  You might be thinking that an ophthalmologist will not hire you if you are not certified, but you can't get certified unless you have worked under the supervision of an ophthalmologist for a year.  Actually, many doctors hire people "off the street" and train them, and many techs begin by working other jobs in the doctor's office.

The "independent study course" by the AAO is a book titled Ophthalmic Medical Assisting.  It covers the basics of ophthalmic assisting very well, and it doesn't take a long time to read through.  The examination that comes with it is short and easy (it's an open book test).  You send the exam back to the AAO to be scored.

You may have noticed that eyetec.net does not have many Modules that cover the basics of ophthalmic assisting, such as vision assessment, lensometry, and tonometry.  This is because we did not want to duplicate information on subject matter that has already been covered very well by the book  Ophthalmic Medical Assisting.  Our study guide assumes that you have access to a copy of this book.  For some of the content areas, we will refer you to this book to study instead of referring you to modules on eyetec.net.

If you have worked under the supervision of an ophthalmologist for at least a year, and if your ophthalmologist can attest that you have the skills covered in the assistant level content areas, and if you are familiar with the subject matter in the book Ophthalmic Medical Assisting, then you will easily pass the assistant level certifying examination.  The COA exam is not a difficult exam.  I know of many assistants who have passed the exam by only studying the Ophthalmic Medical Assistant.  Of course, it would be embarrassing (and expensive) if you did not pass, so you might want to work through the content area study guide that follows.  There are some good exam preparation courses available, but you really don't need to spend your money on them unless you have very little work experience.

When returning to the study guide, you can skip this introduction and go directly to the exam content areas by clicking on the title "Study Guide" in the menu bar at the top of the first page of the introduction.  Otherwise, click here to go to the content area study guide.