Who influenced your decision to become an optometrist and your interest in dry eye and electrodiagnostics?
Since I was in high school, I knew I wanted to be an eye doctor. The father of one of my closest friends growing up was an optometrist. I saw that he seemed to have a job that he really liked and also worked what I thought were reasonable hours. He wasn’t working long weekends or getting emergency calls. And science had always been my interest. I always knew I wanted to do something in the medical field. That was how my optometry journey started.
My interest in dry eye came from seeing how many patients with the condition wanted better and more treatment options. They were unhappy and trying to find solutions. Working with these patients, who are often so invested in trying to alleviate their symptoms, really sparked my interest in dry eye in the first years of my career.
When I finished my residency in 2010, the chief of the electrodiagnostics clinic at the college retired. So they came to this fresh resident who was now going to be a faculty member and said, “Hey, we need somebody to be the chief of electrodiagnostics. We’d like you to do it.” I had little experience, but I accepted, and I’m really glad I did because it’s been a fun journey as the technology has emerged over the past 10 years and become much more mainstream.
How did you become involved with the Intrepid Eye Society? What was the vision, and has that changed?
Justin Schweitzer, OD, FAAO, and Michael Cooper, OD, established the Intrepid Eye Society and were its first two presidents. Justin called me about 5 or 6 years ago and said, “Hey, ophthalmology has this group where young, emerging thought leaders who want to move the profession forward can collaborate and work together. I would like to establish something like that for optometry.”
So he founded the Intrepid Eye Society. It’s a group of emerging thought leaders who are 5, 10, 15, 20 years into their careers and want to move the profession forward. They want to better the profession through technology, through working with each other, and through collaboration with ophthalmology and with industry.
What do you predict the profession of optometry will look like in the future?
It’s going to be exciting, COVID-19 aside, and optometry will continue to evolve into a more medical profession. Forty to 50 years ago, optometry was eyeglasses and contact lenses; that was it. But we have evolved to be the primary eye care providers, whether for glasses and contacts, general medical eye exams, managing diabetic retinopathy, or caring for patients with glaucoma or red eyes.
In the next 10 years, optometry will continue to become more of a medical profession and will expand in the arena in which I practice today: laser procedures and injectables. As we see more patients in their 60s, 70s, and 80s, we will also see more glaucoma, macular degeneration, diabetic retinopathy, and cataracts. So optometry is going to need to embrace our role as primary medical eye care providers.
What advice do you have for young ODs just starting out in their careers?
Get involved and stay involved. Be involved with your state association, your local societies, your colleagues, and say yes to as many things as you can, whether it’s working with the local society to put on a program, doing a CE lecture, writing an article, or doing free eye care days. You will reap many rewards from that collaboration. The feeling of being a team with the local optometry society and state association is going to benefit your patients, your practice, your profession, and your general feeling that you’re doing good things for the community. Don’t forget, however, to balance all of that activity with your family life.
What legacy do you hope to leave behind in the eye care profession?
I hope I have helped the students and residents whom I’ve trained to be better eye doctors, better clinicians, and better patient educators. I hope my patients think that I’ve taken good care of them. And I hope that I’ve left the profession in a better place than we started with. I believe optometry is incredibly well trained, and I hope people will remember that maybe I was part of helping move optometry forward and expanding the privileges that we have.
How did you meet your wife?
We met during undergraduate school in Jamestown, North Dakota. I walked into class my junior year and she was there. We started dating several months later, and we both happened to be going into optometry.
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