Eyeworld

OPHTHALMOLOGY BUSINESS 58 June 2018 what is important to you. When I had little kids, I worked part time. Now that they're older, I'm busier than ever. It's not a mad dash to the top. Just because you say no doesn't mean another opportunity isn't going to come up. EyeWorld: Any final thoughts for young ophthalmologists? Dr. MacDonald: Don't compete. Collaborate. It's so much easier to collaborate with each other and give each other opportunities. Ophthal- mology can be full of friendships and relationships. I. Howard Fine, MD Clinical professor of ophthalmology, Oregon Health and Science University Portland, Oregon EyeWorld: What advice would you give about becoming a great teacher? Dr. Fine: You have to have a strong desire to want to help the student. I taught everything from pha- co technique and technology to instruments and IOLs, drugs and devices, and I felt I was helping patients. That's why I got into teach- ing. I thought if I could impart the knowledge to the surgeon-student, he would be able to apply it and I would be helping patients. EyeWorld: How do you stay up to date? Dr. Fine: I think it all starts with wanting to give improved results to your patients. New techniques and technologies are generally devised and innovated in order to make things simpler and safer, and you have to want to bring that to your patient in order to keep up to date. I think one of the most important ways is to stay in touch with the literature, but if you see something that's interesting and looks intrigu- ing and you want to apply it, get ahold of someone who does it and knows about it and either talk with them or visit them in the OR. I think it's worth traveling across the country to do that. EyeWorld: What's the best way to interact with industry? Dr. Fine: You have to want to be ethical and let them know that. I let all of the companies I worked with know that I wanted to publish any of my results, regardless of how that made their product look. EyeWorld: How would you suggest maintaining a healthy work-life balance? Dr. Fine: Maintaining a healthy work-life balance is impossible. No- body does it. I think what you have to appreciate is you have choices and options and you pick them, but they don't always turn out to be healthy. I was able to do what I did because I had such great help from my wife. The one thing I did to maintain a healthy balance is I didn't start traveling to teach until my youngest child left for college. EyeWorld: Any final thoughts for young ophthalmologists? Dr. Fine: I think ophthalmologists should concentrate on doing what they like to do, not what they find easily accessible, because the more you do anything, the more referrals you're going to get for that thing. If you end up spending a lot of time doing things you don't like, it's a mistake. Concentrate on what you like and try to do more of that. Robert Watzke, MD Adjunct professor of ophthalmology, Oregon Health and Science University Portland, Oregon EyeWorld: What would be your advice for success in academic medicine? Dr. Watzke: First, you have to have a real desire and interest to do this. In other words, your interest in it can't be simply because you want a title or to be invited to do lectures. The second is you have to devise a system so that you can keep track of all the interesting cases that you see so that you can find the patient's records on a particular topic quickly. Otherwise you are cursed with the problem where you remember you had an experience with a topic that reminds you of what you're looking at but you can't remember who the patient was or the details of it. The third thing is to develop a specific interest. Depending on your background or training, you might have a particular subspecialty. You might be interested in technique, complications, helpful aids and devices in surgery. Finally, if you're going to go into academic medicine, you need to schedule some time during the week where you can catch up on your reading and leave it for access- ing records and bibliographies. Try to stick to it, otherwise you get so behind in reading that it's difficult to catch up. EyeWorld: How do you stay up to date? Dr. Watzke: As far as keeping your skills up to date with surgery and new developments in surgical tech- niques, that's a matter of being alert to these new developments when you learn about them or hear about them. Take the time and expense to go to the source and learn it. As far as new techniques in medicine or treatment, it's a matter of keeping up with reading. EyeWorld: What's the best way to interact with industry? Dr. Watzke: It's extremely import- ant to keep your relationships with industry at arm's length. I'm not rig- id anymore about it, but I do think that one should not be so interested in it that you lose control of the data, and you're just a data miner for a company and the company takes the information and uses what they want as they want it. EyeWorld: How would you suggest maintaining a healthy work-life balance? Dr. Watzke: If you have family re- sponsibilities that are a huge part of your life, you've got to be careful to accept that and not try to do every- thing in every field. You need to be hard boiled about it and say I might need to forgo an extra amount of income to have more time with my family or to have more time to read and study. EW Editors' note: The physicians have no financial interests related to their comments. Contact information Arbisser: drlisa@arbisser.com Fine: hfine@finemd.com MacDonald: susanmacdonaldeyecorps@gmail.com Watzke: watzker@ohsu.edu Experts continued from page 57 Careers.ASOA.org

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