EyeWorld is the official news magazine of the American Society of Cataract & Refractive Surgery.
Issue link: https://digital.eyeworld.org/i/111385
February 2013 EW NEWS & OPINION 19 Chief medical editor���s corner of the world Taking an unconventional career path by David F. Chang, M.D., chief medical editor Dr. Chang: As a faculty member and former resident at Northwestern, how did you first get interested in international ophthalmology? May Khadem, M.D., is a cataract surgeon on the faculty of Northwestern University, Chicago. For the past two decades, she has quietly led an amazing parallel career in humanitarian blindness prevention and treatment abroad���particularly in the area of cataract blindness. Her alternative career path is as interesting as it is unconventional, and it has led her all over the world. Most recently, this interest has taken May to Shanghai, where she has relocated for the past two the years. In my own interaction with residents, I am impressed with how many young ophthalmologists have a strong desire to ���nd ways to contribute their teaching expertise in the developing world. While they may not become the next May Khadem, her career shows the extent to which one can make a substantial global contribution while practicing in an academic setting in the U.S. May is very passionate about the work she is carrying out, and I think that she would be a wonderful resource for any young ophthalmologist who would like to learn more about how she fashioned this parallel career. Dr. Khadem: I was a little more than two years out of my residency when I took a job on a three-year project with the International Eye Foundation and went to Grenada in the West Indies with my husband and two children to develop eye services for the 100,000 inhabitants. The U.S. had just invaded Grenada causing the Cubans, who provided health services, to leave. Conditions were quite primitive with no microscope or microsurgical instruments. The project involved equipping the eye department with modern equipment, training a Grenadian physician with assistance from the ophthalmologists in Barbados, training ophthalmic nurses, and instituting school vision screening and screening for cataracts and glaucoma at the smaller primary health centers. Because of the small population, the project, while challenging, was doable and resulted in accessible services that exist to this day. It was deeply educational���even transformative���on professional, social, cultural, and personal levels that permanently changed my outlook. Dr. Chang: In what countries have you worked during your career? Dr. Khadem: Grenada, Guyana, Turks and Caicos Islands, Albania, Mongolia, Cameroon, Central African Republic, and China. Dr. Chang: How have you been able to balance your career as an American academic ophthalmologist and your humanitarian work? David F. Chang, M.D., chief medical editor Vision in Practice founders: Hao Xiaojun, M.D., May Khadem M.D., and Jeffrey Parker Dr. Hao Xiaojun at work in Shandong province Source (all): May Khadem, M.D. Dr. Khadem: I was lucky to be part of a department that was very supportive, have colleagues who covered my patients while I was gone (almost two months a year), and a chairman who valued the work I was doing and gave me the freedom to travel extensively. Dr. Chang: Tell us about your current work in China. Dr. Khadem: I served for 17 years as executive director of a U.S.-based NGO, Health for Humanity, an organization with a strong focus on blindness prevention in its early years. I learned from that work that transformative change was very difficult to catalyze from a distance, no matter how frequent the visits. I also learned that training physicians and technical training in general has limited outcome if the underlying culture and institutional ethical framework remain unchanged. In fact, without an ethical framework focused on service to the common good, technical training by itself might even have undesirable results. When I stepped down from my leadership role in Health for Humanity, it became possible to pursue my long-standing desire to become involved in blindness prevention at the grassroots. We moved to China because the challenges, as well as the opportunities, are probably the greatest in the world. Initially I worked for seven months in a Chinese hospital where I learned a great deal and realized that it was not a model receptive to change. I then went to Aravind Eye Hospital for a month to experience firsthand how they manage to perform their miracle of high-volume, high-quality surgery that is both affordable and profitable. I also learned to do SICS. When I returned to China, I teamed up with Aravind-trained Chinese ophthalmologist Dr. Hao Xiaojun and Ophthalmology World Report publisher Jeffrey Parker to form Vision in Practice. The two of them were already facilitating training for Chinese ophthalmologists at Aravind. We partnered with a small private hospital, in Shandong province, to adapt the Aravind continued on page 20