Beyond Refraction, Frames and Contacts
When an eye doctor graduates from school most likely he or she will work in a practice that offers primary vision care which includes refraction and dispensing of frames and contact lenses. Still, vision care is more than just having someone behind a phoropter. So, many eye doctors are forgoing the optical dispensary and focusing […]
Myopia May Not Last A Lifetime
This just in—millions of children have myopia! Okay you already knew that fact, especially since a portion of those millions come into your practice. Of course, myopia unlike a lot of medical conditions has a simple solution, namely corrective lenses. As great as eyeglasses and contact lenses are in achieving near perfect vision, what if […]
How to Reward Staff
I’ve worked in large organizations and I was rewarded on two separate occasions for my birthday. One was at a large hospital system, where I received a voucher for a free meal in the cafeteria and the other was at a college where I received a card and gift card from the college president. Granted […]
Smart Glasses
Bifocals are great, they’ve been around for over 200 years and they help persons with presbyopia read books and newspapers. Yet there have been developments, such as the automobile and the computer, that have occurred over the course of these 200 years that make bifocals cumbersome. You have to adjust your head to read a […]
To Be or Not to Be a Practice Owner
It seems like independent eye doctors had it made back in the 1960s, 1970s or 1980s. The way the older doctors talk, it sounds like all they had to do was graduate from medical school, hang out a shingle and the patients would stream in. Not so fast. While the business and clinical parts make […]
Color and Health
“So and So is the picture of health.” “So and So has a sickly pallor.” This is the 21st century and with all the advances that have taken place in medicine, we still associate certain colors with health or the lack thereof. This is especially true when seeing someone’s face. Aren’t these things as arbitrary […]
Sunday Scaries
Working in or owning an optometric practice can be great. There’s the health and science side which is always evolving and appeals to the learner part of you and there’s the business side that appeals to the creator/builder part of you. Of course, the ever-evolving part of health and science means that you have to […]
Regeneration in the Retina
The human body has an amazing ability to heal itself. If you get a paper cut, the cut heals in seven to ten days. If you get a bruise, it heals within two to four weeks. If you get a broken bone, it takes three to ten weeks to heal. An injury to the retina […]
Independent Practice
American Optometric Association issued a report on the state of optometry in 2013 and they reported that there are over 22,000 optometrists who are owner/operators of an independent practice. Despite the current trends in retail, optometry seems to be the last bastion of the independent ownership. Of course, there is competition from chains, mass retailers […]
Retina Patterns Tell a Story
No one has to sell eye doctors on how cool the human eye is. One interesting area of the eye that is being researched is the retinal pigment epithelium (RPE). This is the layer of cells that is next to the retina. It acts as a conduit between the photoreceptors of the retina and the […]