hey what's up this is Dr. Allen here from the dr eye health show and this video is
going to be a little different from what we normally produce here i'm very thankful and
just grateful for how successful the channel has been over the last three years when i started it
we've helped so many people learn about the eyes their diseases treatments different tips
and tricks to help them see better as well as well as help people find vision products that
will actually help them and that's really kind of the heart and soul of this channel
and why i even started making this content so again i'm super grateful and thankful for all of
that also been pretty lucky that people have asked and showed interest in me and my journey and why i
chose optometry and really my medical journey and how i got to be an optometrist and everything so
my name is joseph allen i go by dr joseph allen instead of what my best friends call me which is
joey and i go by that in clinics if you ever see me as a patient you'll you'll hear me introduce
is dr joseph allen because i know i look young and everyone thinks i'm i just graduated high
school or something but even though i'm 32 at this time i feel like if i call myself joey
or introduce myself as joey i think i look even younger i didn't get into optometry or healthcare
for a lot of the same reasons i know a lot of other people do i know a lot of people get into
health care because they have parents or a family member of some kind that is in a
specialty of health care whether it be nursing their medical doctor they're a dentist etc
i got into optometry probably because uh one my parents wore glasses and pretty thick glasses in
fact and then i ended up requiring glasses at the age of like six or seven years old i was already
pretty nearsighted thanks to nearsighted thanks to my mother who is about a minus ten diopters so uh
thanks mom kind of a bigger moment that directed me toward optometry was that in junior high
well before junior high was pretty lonely i was a lonely kid sat inside a lot basically read books
watched movies play video games all day and they my parents encouraged me to get into sports so i
said okay i'm gonna pick football but it's kind of tough to play a contact sport like football
if you're wearing thick coke bottle glasses so my mother thankfully got got me introduced to my
optometrist and discussing contact lenses and this is something that i try to remember every time i
fit a kid into contact lenses because it just can change somebody's life dramatically being able to
go from this nerdy dorky kid with thick glasses to all of a sudden being able to play sports and
make friends and then have this self-confidence boost i had so much more self-confidence in myself
that girls started paying attention to me and getting affection or just any sort of attention
from the opposite sex at the age of 13 and junior high was like the biggest deal to me so whenever
i would go see my dentist i was not a big fan of them poking and prodding at my teeth or fitting me
in retainers or braces but i loved seeing my eye doctor everything they did from the refraction
uh to all the instruments they used just talking about astigmatism and me needing weighted contacts
to fit for my astigmatism it was like black magic to me i just loved it and was curious
about it it was so cool so in my later years of high school when everyone's asking hey what are
you going to do i knew that if i was going to be anybody that i wanted to be like my eye doctor so
that's kind of where i set my needle towards north in a way now thankfully i was able to reach out
to my optometrist and ask him about what his life was like what was school like how
did he become an optometrist and then he even invited me to shadow him at the clinic which was
a great thing and i strongly encourage anybody who's thinking about any healthcare profession
talk to somebody that you can get a hold of that does that as a job and ask if they can if you can
shadow them because you will you'll learn a lot from that but it ended up turning out that the
eye doctor that i was shadowing his name is dr mike sufka and big shout out to him he not only
was my eye doctor who fit me in contact lenses and kind of inspired me to go into optometry but
he even went to the same undergraduate college that i ended up going to which was the st john's
university and college of st benedict in central Minnesota now grade wise in undergraduate college
i did pretty well overall the early first year i kind of struggled mainly in biology
and i think it was partially because one i wasn't that interested in learning the basics
of biology cells the different organelles and the basic organism single cell organisms
and animals i was more interested in just human anatomy human physiology and those are more
advanced courses that you take later in your undergraduate courses so i i kind of struggled
with this keeping attention and not falling asleep in class things like that i was also wasn't just
my brain wasn't geared toward learning and memorizing science i was more geared and
really good at reading history books and writing papers so it was a big gear shift for me and i had
to re-learn how i learn and finally in the later years of college i started figuring it out and
that's when i started setting the curves on tests and doing very well so early on my gpa wasn't the
best but by the end of the undergraduate college i don't remember what my gpa was but i know it was
like a 3.6 or something like that so it wasn't a 4.0 like a lot of other students are
going into healthcare professions but uh i did overall fairly well now a big time for me uh
specifically in my journey was around my sophomore junior year of undergrad because i did two things
one i went back and shadowed my optometrist again this time shadowing not only did i get
to visually already kind of understand what was going into but he encouraged me to shadow not just
him as an optometrist but shadow another doctor an ophthalmologist which honestly at
a young kid i didn't even know the difference between an ophthalmologist and optometrist
and i should probably do a video on that i should probably encourage i'll get one of
my ophthalmology friends to join me on here and we can kind of go into it together like
the differences in our professions but what i ended up doing was shadowing an ophthalmologist
where i got to go into the operating room and watch an invasive surgery there right in front
of me i watched cataract surgeries for most of the morning and it was fascinating and i loved it
except that when they finally brought like a kid out to do strabismus surgery they had a young kid
who needed an eye muscle to be resected where they cut the muscle and reattach it
and in cataract surgery you don't really see blood there's not really blood and gore
in cataract surgery it's all very technical and all very tight-knit and fascinating but as soon as
i saw blood and saw them pulling apart more of the the orbit and everything like that my stomach said
no and i ended up getting wheezy and basically fainting passing out in the operating room
and so that was uh just kind of a lesson learned that hey maybe doing invasive surgery
wasn't for me so that ended up solidifying my decision that no i don't want to go be
an ophthalmologist and do invasive surgery i instead want to do optometry and be a clinician
doing all the clinic work and then after that experience around that same time i ended up
getting introduced to a short uh kind of three day event out on the west coast at uc berkeley
which is called opto camp and i'm not sure if it's still going on i think it might be but it was an
opportunity for me to go out to an optometry school and basically experience september school
for three days sitting through lecture kind of learning again all the prerequisites and the how
to take the optometry acceptance test and learning how to interview and just kind of understanding
what optometry school is going to be like and how where my journey is going to go for the next
you know four or five years and that was a really good experience and anybody who's thinking about
optometry in the united states i strongly suggest their program now to get into optometry school not
only do you need a fairly good gpa but you also need to take the optometry acceptance test the oat
now this test is basically just like the mcat so i studied for it by reading going through like all
these kind of test books that they sell these test prep books but i also read through uh one or two
mcat books that all my other friends were going into medical school or applying for medical school
they were reading through those so again it's all kind of the same stuff so when if again if
you're somebody or you know somebody who's going to be going into optometry i suggest uh prepping
for it by reading all of those different test things and just getting ready for it i didn't
score amazing i scored better than average on the oat but i did score a hundred percent on the
reading comprehension section uh which kind of just shows that my specific learning set i can
go to a lecture and do okay but if i sit down and read like a textbook or if i read a journal
article that's how i really learn the material and so that sort of skill is something that i
uh really kind of honed in on and i think kind of carried me through not just undergraduate college
but optometry school as well so when it came to applying troop time to school i applied to
probably like six schools uh and got invited to a lot of interviews uh but the one school that i
ended up really being attracted to ended up going to was all the way down in san antonio texas it's
part of the university of incarnate word rosenberg school of optometry and it's a newer school and
the but what what really attracted me to it was that it felt very comfortable i felt welcomed
there they knew who i was they knew my interests this university i went to for undergraduate was
very similar you have the same feel as the school down in texas and when i went down the interview i
was like oh this is nice minnesota's freezing cold i'm down there at like november december and it's
still like in the 80s 90 degrees so i'm like this is a place i could study so i ended up going there
and optometry school is pretty tough uh actually it's very tough there's a lot you're learning both
mathematics and the optics the physics but also learning all of the instrumentation
all the different instruments we use during the exam you're learning all of physiology anatomy
you're learning pharmacology and we're not just talking about the eyes i'm talking about the whole
body so that's a big thing people confuse they're like no optometry school is a lot about the eyes
but the first two years of optometry school is the same as the first two years of pharmacy school
and dentistry and medical school you're basically learning old medicine and you have to understand
the whole body from the feet to the top of the head skin cancer kidney disease heart disease
you have to learn all of those basics both of physiology and pathology and the pharmacology
to treat those so i took years of pharmacology courses not just on eye medications but pills to
treat infections as well as kidney disease as well as cancers and all these different things you have
to learn all of this stuff just to get through the basics and again you're learning all of this while
simultaneously required to go in after hours to learn all these extra instruments and get
proficient and good with them so you actually know what you're doing when you start seeing patients
while living there in san antonio i basically was a study person i basically went i was studying all
the time uh whether we were in class and i was going home and constantly reading and studying
uh so i did i did fairly well in school and i was pretty proud i did graduate
with magna [ __ ] laude and the salutatorian this meeting i took second in my class so
gpa wise and just grade wise i did very well now another big part of my journey was that when i got
into optometry school i started learning about all my professors and all these people who are just
like geniuses and mentors that i look up to they all did this thing called a residency and if you
don't know what a residency is this is uh you've already gotten your degree and you technically
are a doctor but you are getting like accelerated advanced hands-on training and you usually have a
mentor above you who's teaching you kinda at the same time so in optometry residencies are optional
and i think i don't know the exact statistics but only about one-third of optometrists
go on to do residencies but it allows you to kind of sub specialize whether it be specialty contact
lenses cornea maybe surgical surgery co-management or perhaps pediatrics or vision therapy
traumatic brain injury low vision there's a lot of different sub-specialties so i myself uh looked
up to these mentors and thought wow they're so smart and i want to be the best doctor i can be
no matter what so i guess i add on an extra year of residency for me to my uh you know my already
eight years of education so i ended up applying and going into residency and i went to the va
medical hospital here in Minneapolis which is kind of a primary care has some low vision traumatic
brain injury and being in the va it's very much heavy and ocular disease so i got to see some
really insane cases uh every single day and it was a tough tough residency experience now i know this
video is already getting long um so maybe i won't go super in depth into my experience in residency
but if people really want to know leave some likes and comments in the section uh and then you
know if people are really interested in it maybe maybe we'll be able to make a video for you guys
but after residency i ended up working in private practice and i ended up having some experience
working at a commercial place for a short time which i found out was just wasn't for me i ended
up working at a senior home traveling around in kind of a mobile eye clinic doing eye exams for
the elderly for a short time and then ultimately working in private practice uh i kind of got
to that point where i was like my favorite part of seeing patients and the eye exam is
explaining to my patients the different diseases and helping them kind of have that aha moment that
they can do things just in their lifestyle to improve their eyesight or to protect themselves
from having vision problems in the future and i thought you know what if there was just something
like a tv show about eyes and vision and something that would help people that would be amazing
and i i kind of realized if anyone was going to do it uh it was going to be me so that was kind of
end of 2017 when i started having that realization and that's kind of when the concept and the idea
for the dr eye health channel began and i'll tell you when i first started the channel i didn't know
what i was doing i still you know somewhat don't know what i'm doing i'm very much self-taught
in terms of how the cameras work the lights the sound the editing almost all of this is all done
100 just by me so uh when you ever watch these videos and you're like wow what video editor are
you using what what company you're using like no that that's me uh i'm in the process of building
out my team so i can start making more content rather than just one video a week i'd really
like to push it to being like two or more because there's just so many topics there's so many great
questions that you and other viewers are reaching out and leaving in the comments section and it
takes a lot of time and work to make these videos and to do them right and make them scientifically
accurate and the research into different products uh it does there's a lot to it and
honestly in the early days of the channel within the first few months i wasn't getting any viewers
any subscribers i had like 16 subscribers for all my friends and family and that was all that
was there but uh i just thought you know what this is something if i can help one person it's going
to be worth it so i'm going to keep doing these i enjoy doing them so uh that's that's again what i
was doing and then finally started catching on and people started again commenting liking subscribing
and it uh it started taking off and it's been kind of just my mini project and
so yeah thank you but i really can't say thank you guys enough uh if you've made it this far into
this video again i know this is a longer video but i hope that you're getting a lot from this channel
if i try to be really active in the comments it's difficult for me to get to everybody
but i do encourage you leave comments hit a like button for me at the very least
you can reach out to me at any time we do have
our different email lists as well as our website now that we've been building it's kind of in the
early stages but we're working on it if you want to check out the website for extra kind of blog
information about icare vision things that are coming out we even have a newsletter now
that's going out every week that kind of informing people about new study findings and new products
that are coming out uh kind of answering people's questions common questions that we're getting
so if you want to get more information about eye health and just want to interact with us more i
highly encourage you check out our website we'll put that in the description below and even sign
up for the newsletter if you'd like but hey thank you so much for watching this video and sticking
around this long i can't thank you enough for all the support that you've given me uh in my journey
through all this and i hope i can continue to offer you guys and share my knowledge just
helping you with anything vision related whether it be explaining a simple disease helping you find
a good pair of glasses or contacts or even just being able to help you find or navigate your way
to a healthcare professional in your area always keep an eye on it and we'll talk to you soon