Most laypersons and medical personnel have no idea what an indirect ophthalmoscope is. I always get suspicious glances when I’m carrying around my indirect scope in the hospital. It’s black, and looks like a weapon. Ophthalmologists use it to examine the fundus. It provides a light source parallel to our sight, and gives us a stereoscopic view. Last night I got about 5 double-takes when I was walking to the emergency room around 2am. One security guard actually stopped in his tracks and grabbed his gun from his holster.
Bastard. What do people think I’m doing? I’m sure that everyone tries to be particularly alert, but there’s no reason to be paranoid.
We had a grand rounds topic on the evolution of eyebrow perception. While the topic didn’t stimulate too much discussion from the non-plastics folks, the presenter showed an interesting video on the evolution of reality to public appeal. I remember seeing this video years ago:
Those of you who have scoured the web for ophthalmology educational resources have probably come across Tim Root’s website. I went to medical school with Tim, and he is a tireless and selfless educator. Aside from being able to explain science in a direct, humorous manner, he is also an outstanding cartoonist.
Tim finally published his book and has made it available on Amazon. (Support my link on the image!) I used this book while as a medical student, and it was very informative.
I was at the local department store, and almost mistook this bottle for “Mr. Clean”. I wondered if Mr. Universal was more potent than Mr. Clean, but decided not to take the chance.
One of the consequences of carrying the hospital ophthalmology on-call pager is that you end up becoming the primary eye consultant for anyone who knows your number. ANYONE. This includes people outside the hospital’s referral network.
Last week I received a call from a gynecologist who worked at the hospital but was 2 hours away. She noticed that her eye was “bloodshot”, and described to me signs of a subconjunctival hemorrhage. Of course there was nothing I could do except offer her a ticket to my emergency room if she wanted an examination. She declined.
On Saturday morning at 4:30am, I received a page from the hospital’s cardiothoracic (CT) surgery fellow worried about his own red eye. I had just stepped foot in my apartment 10 minutes earlier, after a horrible slew of ED consultations. I asked him to drop by our weekend clinic at 8:30am for examination, but he stated that he was scrubbing into “a case” and probably would not be finished until 10am.
As angry as I felt for being paged for likely non-emergent personal consultations, I actually felt sorry for the CT fellow.
Then I realized the reason for the high volume of non-emergent calls is that people, no matter how educated they are, know very little about the eye. Who knew that you shouldn’t wear daily contacts for 4 days straight? Yes, if you wear inch-thick eye liner, some of it will get into your eyes.
I guess that’s why ophthalmologists still have jobs.
Most laypersons and medical personnel have no idea what an indirect ophthalmoscope is. I always get suspicious glances when I’m carrying around my indirect scope in the hospital. It’s black, and looks like a weapon. Ophthalmologists use it to examine the fundus. It provides a light source parallel to our sight, and gives us a stereoscopic view. Last night I got about 5 double-takes when I was walking to the emergency room around 2am. One security guard actually stopped in his tracks and grabbed his gun from his holster.
Those of you who have scoured the web for ophthalmology educational resources have probably come across Tim Root’s 
I was at the local department store, and almost mistook this bottle for “Mr. Clean”. I wondered if Mr. Universal was more potent than Mr. Clean, but decided not to take the chance.