Clinical Training - New England College of Optometry
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Clinical Training
Because it’s the most important decision of your life, NECO has created a unique clinical training program designed to help you prepare for a lifelong, fulfilling career in optometry.
Few schools provide the breadth and depth of clinical experiences you’ll find at NECO.
As a student, you’ll experience a multidisciplinary model where you’ll be a part of the patient’s healthcare team, collaborating with primary care doctors, ophthalmologists, pediatricians, and other providers. It’s a model still rare among optometry schools. Yet one NECO believes in so strongly that it has continued to invest in the curricular and clinical model that makes it possible.
Overview
Year 1
Vision screenings at local schools; observe practicing optometrists.
Year 2
Two clinical rotations, 4-6 hrs/week.
Year 3
Direct patient care in three primary care rotations.
Year 4
12 months of full-time patient care in four, three-month externships.
The NECO Clinical Experience
We believe that for students to become great clinicians, they have to understand the communities they’re working in.
When and How You'll Train
Within a month of your first year, you will have the chance to conduct clinical observations with optometrists and participate in vision screenings in schools. Each aspect of your clinical training provides experience with different technologies, medical records, practice models, and eye conditions.
Our Clinical Program
Where You’ll Train
From learning vital skills in our Clinical Training Center to rotations in community health centers, our program is designed to prepare you to succeed in real-world eye care settings. NECO’s pioneered its community-based clinical training model and remains a national role model in clinical education.
Where You'll Train
NECO's Community-based Model
NECO created its community-based clinical training model in which students train in community health centers (CHCs), its own comprehensive eye centers, VA health centers, and other eye clinics based around New England. As the first optometry school to conceive and create such a clinical training model, NECO has influenced thousands of optometrists and optometry itself.
This community-based model fosters a focus on the whole patient’s well-being, rather than just the eyes. The exposure to multidisciplinary care emphasizes the role of the optometrist in a patient’s care team.
NECO’s health center collaborations help students to become proficient not just in clinical skills, but in the critical thinking that is vital to competent patient management in any type of clinical setting they choose in any part of the world.
Students embark on their optometric careers knowing what it’s like to be part of the community and to provide vital eye care services to its members.
You’ll be able to learn firsthand critical skills in diversity, social determinants of health, and cultural humility and competence.
The model provides exposure to a complex array of patients that help students develop their diagnostic and treatment decision-making skills, and also requires them to interact with providers in other fields – from neurology to cardiology to psychiatry.
NECO clinics in CHCs enhance access to vital eye care services for thousands of patients every year – at lower cost and closer to where they live and work.
We have seen many students change their career aspirations toward multidisciplinary, medical-based optometry or even decide to practice at community health centers.
Learning in Action at NECO
Take a look inside our state-of-the-art Clinical Training Center and follow our students as they provide care in community health centers and settings in Boston and beyond.
Video: NECO Clinical Training
View Video and Caption
From community health centers, to VA hospitals, to academic medical centers, you have many opportunities as you train to become an optometrist.
NECO Knows Clinical Education
Comprehensive, multidisciplinary, community-based. And it all leads to you becoming a compassionate, competent doctor of optometry. That’s the NECO experience.
1st
month at NECO
Students start hands-on training with vision screenings at schools.
~2,000
Number of patients
you’ll see during your 4 years of clinical experience.
#1
First optometry school
Created the community-based clinical training model.
Voices of NECO
Students Seeing Patients
Tabarek
Besides my great preceptors and co-interns, my favorite experience at South Boston has been getting to know the patients. Every single patient has a different background and a unique personality–it’s an honor and a privilege to get to know who they are beyond their eye conditions.
Class Year
2026
Connecting Students to Community
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