Experience at Indiana Eye Doctors
Some of the most important experiences I have had throughout my undergraduate career preparing me to continue to pursue my doctorate include working at Indiana Eye Doctors for approximately 3 years, shadowing Dr. Kristina Jordan, OD, and shadowing physicians in other fields of medicine as well. I owe so much of my experience and the hands-on knowledge I have gained in the field of optometry to the doctors at Indiana Eye Doctors. I am currently employed as the assistant manager for the optometric technicians at our office. As an optometric technician, I am responsible for conducting preliminary testing on patients while triaging the patient's ocular complaints. I aid in the continuation of care with other medical professionals and have gained experience in the basics of insurance verification, eligibility, and filing.
Figure 1: This figure is an image of the pre-testing machines I conduct at Indiana Eye Doctors. From left to right the machines are the air puff tonometry, auto refractor, and visual fields.
Figure 2: This image shows me using the auto-refractor during a pre-test
Figure 3: This figure is an image of the optomap retinal imagining machine used in the second pre-testing
One of the best parts of my job at Indiana Eye Doctors is pre-testing patients before their exams with our optometrists. While pretesting I take patients into two separate rooms before bringing them into the exam room to see the optometrist. In the first pre-test room I administered three different tests. The first test I administer is an air puff tonometry. This machine measures the intraocular pressure of the eye and helps give warning signs of potential glaucoma. The next test is an autorefractor machine which helps in the automated assessment of refraction, giving a baseline prescription that the doctors use to tweak and perfect patients’ true refraction. This machine can be seen in Figure 2 where I am administering the procedure to a patient. The last test is a visual field machine to measure peripheral vision important in testing for warning signs of glaucoma and macular degeneration. The visual field machine can also be utilized to pinpoint areas of blindness that may be indicative of undiagnosed non-visual pathologies including brain tumors. All of these initial pre-testing machines can be shown in Figure 1 below. The last portion of the pre-testing conducted includes an optomap in a second room that takes retinal images of patients’ eyes. Optomap machines are essential because the retinal images they produce allow the optometrists to see each patient’s optic nerves, macula, and retina for easy recognition of any possible ocular disease progression or initiation. This machine can be shown in Figure 3 above.