The big picture

The first Friday of each month, Omni Eye Surgery’s referring optometrists meet in the New York office to listen to a lecture over coffee and bagels. With the waiting room set up theatre-style, we all get cozy and enjoy the presentation. Friday January 25th at 7:30 a.m. The temperature in NY was in the low teens; we needed to be cozy. The usual crowd, surprisingly, was in attendance. That is a testament to dedication to our profession, our patients, and to education.

The lecture that day was on adult strabismus, delivered by Joseph, Napolitano, MD, Omni’s pediatric and adult strabismus surgeon. “Dr. Nap” knows his stuff-strabismus. Our usual lecturer, retina specialist Dr. Burton Wisotsky, lectures on, well, retina. Diabetic retinopathy, retinal macula degeneration, retinal detachments. Peripheral retinal degenerations, hereditary retina degenerations, and retinal lesions. Retina this and retina that. Dr. Douglas Grayson, glaucoma. Open-angle, narrow-angle. Uveitic glaucoma, secondary glaucoma. Fields, OCTs, nerve heads and pachymetry in glaucoma. It’s all glaucoma, all the time (with good dose of cataract surgery lessons). And of course, Dr. Maher delivers a top-notch oculoplastic session.

I am delighted to share lecture time with these fine surgeons. This particular Friday I asked our audience what they would be interested in learning more about. The breadth of interests of these doctors was amazing. I received requests that included information on new therapeutics, anterior segment disease, and neuro-optometry. Inquiries for clinical and practice management tips, pediatric optometry, and how to encourage patient contact lens compliance were filed. My favorite request? “The Future of Optometry.”

How fortunate are we optometrists that every day we encounter, recognize, and manage such diverse pathology? As primary care doctors we are charged with knowing it all, from childhood disorders to geriatric concerns. Unlike my Omni specialist’s narrow areas of expertise, we are abreast of the “whole picture,” the “whole person” from refractive error to retinal diagnosis. And, to keep rolling in alliteration, from contacts to cataracts, astigmatism to amblyopia, polycarbonate to polypoidal choroidal vasculopathy.

How cool is that? How cool are we?ODT