Strike a Balance
Build your skill set, surpass your patients' expectations and trust your colleagues for a well-rounded professional life.
By Eric D. Donnenfeld, M.D., Ophthalmic Consultants of Long Island and Connecticut.

Every ophthalmologist would like to be an expert on every eye-related subject. We'd all like to be our patients' favorite doctor, our staff's favorite boss and well-respected by our colleagues. Taken together as a single goal, that's a tall order for anyone, especially a new ophthalmologist. But once you identify and prioritize your goals, you can begin to tick them off your to-do list and strengthen your position as an eye doctor and a business person.

Here are some basic ideas I've found to be invaluable as you build a solid foundation for success.

Diversify Your Skill Set

One seemingly neglected area in ophthalmology training is refractive surgery. This is unfortunate because refractive surgery is still a growing field and attracting more attention from the public.

All too often, I'm seeing new ophthalmologists with little or no training trying to learn refractive surgery on the fly. My advice? Seek out established refractive surgeons and learn from them. Get comfortable with the procedures and skill sets because it will pay off for you in the future.

The flip side to this advice is to remember you can't make a living doing only refractive surgery. Don't give up your "day job" and focus only on refractive procedures. Do yourself a favor and stay on top of the bread-and-butter issues facing ophthalmologists like glaucoma and dry eye. Strike a balance in your professional career and you'll be successful.

Always Exceed Expectations

One of the great misconceptions of private practice is that making your patients happy will build a busy practice. That idea can't be further from the truth. Patients will come to your practice if they have a problem they need treated.

But to build a successful practice, you must exceed your patients' expectations. How do you do this? Treat all your patients with the same care you'd give your family or expect for yourself.

Exceeding expectations doesn't mean finding a cure for glaucoma or a procedure that reverses blindness. Sometimes, all it takes is recognizing and addressing the common problems — blepharitis, allergies, dry eye — that plague so many people. Patients will go from doctor to doctor looking for someone to handle their problems correctly. You need to be that person.

Once you've built up a reservoir of trust and your patients feel comfortable with you because you've resolved a problem that other doctors couldn't, that's when you'll start seeing the more complex cases. If you can properly diagnose a problem and outline an effective treatment plan, your patients won't forget.

Trust Your Partners

You need to like and trust the people with whom you practice. Remember, you'll spend most of your life working with these people. This type of commitment requires due diligence to make sure this is the type of person you want to be "married to" for 40 years.

Trust is the number one requirement. Contracts and legal documents are good, but simply talking to someone for 15 minutes — or asking his former colleagues — may give you more insight into his integrity, work ethic and professional character. If your partner's character is in sync with yours, you have a good chance of success. But if there are marked differences, it may be difficult to practice together. It can be very uncomfortable to practice with someone you don't trust. Don't take this important decision lightly.

Stay Energetic and Focused

You were a good student in medical school. You worked hard, passed your clinicals and did your internship. Now that you're in private practice, it's time to relax, right? Wrong.

I've seen more than my share of ophthalmologists who worked their tails off in medical school only to join a private practice and get lazy. You can't take it easy the first few years in practice. This is the critical time when you begin to establish your name as well as your clinical and surgical reputation. All eyes are on you, and there's no time to rest on your laurels.