Do you take pride in what you do?
Inspirational Optometrist: First, do you take pride in what you do?
Me: Ahh… I think I do…
A few days ago, I had a conversation with a fellow optometrist. Inspired yet through-provoking, when he asked this simple question, I was completely thrown off. Requiring only a simple answer, I gave a hesitant response.
Crisis and Pride
Compared to this inspirational person, I’m only infant in my career. I’ve only ever worked as am employee. This person has worked for others, for themselves, in variety of locations and settings. They are fairly experienced. So, in this conversation, I plan to learn a lot. And a lot I did.
Most optometrists, when approaching their 30s, have a career crisis: is this what I want to be doing for the rest of my life?
During this conversation, we discussed specialties such as myopia control (preventing short-sight in children becoming worse as they grow older) and dry eye (where the eye produces inadequate self-lubrication). These fields are not particularly easy. Some days flow smoothly, happy patients and perfect vision. But there will be challenging days too and sense of importance — pride — in one’s career will help overcome these disappointments.
Specialty
Me: But isn’t ophthalmology just a better form of what we can do? Why are we needed?
Inspirational Optometrist: Can you imagine the state of eye care in New Zealand if there were no optometrists?
The role of optometry is necessary. If we had no optometrists in New Zealand, no primary eyecare, GPs would be burdened with eye problems. GPs have an enormous knowledge base — but the intricacies of the eye go beyond what a single person can deal with, let alone the entire human body. That’s why there is a sub-specialty for every inch of the eyeball. Plus, imagine finding a retinal tear with an opthamascope. I think a lot of GPs would be happy to send these away to their local optometrist.
Ophthalmologists fix the eye when it is broken. As a single optometrist, the impact may seem small — we might not be able to fix a cataract or treat a complicated infection. But New Zealand optometrists as a whole professional body keep the eyes healthy for the population of Aoeteroa.
And that’s through routine eye examinations: detecting disease early and educating patients about not only eye health but how their overall health relates to their eyes.
Back to dry eye and myopia control, our inspirational fellow optometrist argues that these should be managed by optometrist and optometrists only. With the correct equipment, optometrist can diagnose, find causes to, and treat dry eye. The same can be said about myopia control.
One treatment for myopia control is orthokeratology. This is a specially molded contact lenses that is worn during sleep. The lens reshapes the eye so clear vision is achieved the next day.
Orthokeratology is special because it was invented by an optometrist, George Jessen. Invented by an optometrist, prescribed by optometrists. Orthokeratology is ours.
The role of optometry is expanding. Glaucoma prescribing was granted to New Zealand optometrists in 2014. You might think that an ophthalmologist can do a better job. But this is similar to a GP having a focus in skin cancers. Dermatologists can provide more care to specialist cases, while the GP can ease burden by treating more general problems. The role of an optometrist with glaucoma prescribing can help ease the pressure on glaucoma clinics in the public system.
Being Unique, Providing Impact, and Staying Focused
For me, low vision is something that makes me unique. Low vision involves helping patients who cannot see well even with glasses. There is something special in being able to help those who have had people say, ‘there is nothing more than can be done’.
Rather than thinking this is ego, the more skills that I have the more impact I am able to provide. We don’t want to be just another person they see. We want to make a difference in their life.
Another example is scleral lenses. Being able to fit this type of lens can dramatically improve a patient’s life. Successful fitting can reduce corneal graft surgery (replacing the cornea — front layer of eye) by one-fifth.
The worse part is when the fire dies. The signs:
- dragging your feet,
- performance drops for patients and fellow staff, and
- a negative cloud looms overhead.
We want to battle this by constantly learning. But the problem then becomes learning for the sake of learning — I’m guilty of this.
The steps:
- get bored,
- learning creates short term happiness,
- get bored again because it doesn’t apply to a main focus, and
- repeat.
I am guided by our inspirational optometrist: we need to learn new things that are relevant. We can only stretch ourselves so far. Skills that are seperate are weak. Skills that focus on one main goal — our career — is powerful.
For me, I’m trying to stay focused in my writing. Putting my thoughts and ideas out there for others to digest, to create conversation, to help others. These ideas relate to optometry, career, and well-being. Publishing online — being one the best activities I’ve committed to — helps facilitate that.
In addition to this, my programming journey has become more relevant. Like I said before, I’m guilty of learning for the sake of learning. Creating a bot on twitter to re-share optometry related posts I’m happy to say is my first project to combine my love of programming with my career.
When we focus on ventures, I am again reminded by our inspirational optometrist: the monetary reward is not important. Focus on helping others in society. The aim of this twitter bot is to help circulate information by optometrists for optometrists (using a bot made by an optometrist).
Conclusion
Pride in career in important so you can overcome disappointments. The fire is kept alive by realising optometry or whatever career is important to you.
Do you think what you do is important? Are you proud to be an optometrist or what ever your career is?
