Today we heard from current optometrist who have different specialties. Here are the minutes:
Dr. Flom and Dr. Earley
- Flom
- Low vision rehab
- 25 years
- Johns Hopkins clinical research and UC Berkeley for Opt school
- Earley
- Associate Dean for Academic affairs
- Chair of admissions committee
- Professor for 31 year here
- Went to Opt school at OSU and did phD at OSU, undergrad at Northwestern
- Specializes: pediatrics (started in peds), vision therapy, traumatic brain injury and neuro-optometry mostly now
- What makes up your specialty?
- Recommends 6-9 months for first eye exam. For peds, have to like working with babies and have to like working objectively
- Have to stay on top of the science in your specialty (ex: treatment of lazy eye) Have to make sure that you “change with the times”
- Specialization is more common because the field of optometry is growing
- Have to like a challenge to go into neuro
- You have to like the patients you’re working with
- Don’t let the challenge scare you though
- Low vision:
- Works with patient who are “partially sighted”
- Have mild-moderate-severe visual impairment
- Providing equipment, strategies, and devices for them to function at a higher level
- Can’t really “correct” anything, but can help
- Help get some independence
- How is your speciality different day by day and from a regular optometrist
- Binocular vision and vision therapy: there’s a lot of variety in the patients (ex: age)
- Likes that most of his patients have already been seen before
- See patients where “nothing more can be done”
- Don’t see as much comp exams and contact lenses, it’s more challenging work
- “The most challenging patients are the most satisfying”
- Low vision
- Really high stakes (will I ever be able to drive? Will I be able to read again?)
- Special telescope glasses to help with night driving, can help see if you qualify for disability
- Thrill of walking into an exam room and not knowing what you’re going to get
- Have a national network and involvement in a national organization
- Earley says opt is the best career in the world
- What do you want out of your career?
- Not going to be stressed all day long and want to prescribe glasses – great! Private practice is great
- When you become a specialist, you’re going to see a lot more restrictive patients
- Only the patients who need you are going to come see you. As a low vision specialist, you aren’t going to see patients who can see fine.
- The more specialized you’re going, the more restrictive in the patients you see and it’s going to be more challenging
- You’ll get a feeling for who you are and who you want to be as a doctor.
- How did you decide on your specialty
- Earley:
- “I get to race kids down the hall. They wouldn’t like that at low vision”
- Started out as pediatrician interest. Was in medical school to begin with but couldn’t have fun with medical side of pediatrics
- Loves working with kids
- Downside of your specialties
- Earley
- Allow of neuro complications. Come to you with the hope that you can help but you can’t always help
- Have to work with them to “reset” their goals
- Optometry with a heavy dose of psychology built in
- Flom:
- High pressure but can be done with support
- Low vision devices aren’t covered by insurance – economic challenges
- Legislative stuff
- Ohio has great collaboration between the college, the state board, and the OOA/AOA
- A lot of faculty are involved in legislative stuff so if you’re interested in trying to change something, there’s a lot of support in the faculty
- We have to educate about optometry
- You can write your senator or your congressman about scope expansion and encourage change
- Listen to students more than they listen to doctor because you can always leave and form a practice elsewhere if things don’t change
- Realeyes presentations
- How does a specialty change your education
- Doesn’t change your education at Ohio State
- Smaller college and a lot of patients for every specialty.
- Everyone rotates through every specialty to get experience
- You don’t get to opt in or opt out of things, you get to learn everything about optometry. At OSU, doesn’t change your opt education
- If you’re interested in specialties, go to into a residency – primarily ocular disease residencies
- Gives you a one year focus on your specialty
- Example: if you’re doing a peds residency, you’re just going to see peds patients
- You don’t have to do a residency, you can just build up experience over time
- In optometry, by definition there is no “specialization”
- You can’t necessarily advertise yourself as a specialist
- Controversial – becomes political when you start talking about specialization
- Maybe this can become a legislative thing?
- Academy of optometry has diplomate programs that help you become an “expert” in a specialty
- Earley
- Earley:
- Binocular vision and vision therapy: there’s a lot of variety in the patients (ex: age)