AOS Featured Optometrist: Please Meet Dr. Douglas Smith (AKA Dr. Bison) an AOS Member from Oregon

When membership in an organization requires a full measure of your time, treasure and talent, the organization has an obligation to at least be nominally responsive to its membership.  Professional organizations are usually herded from the top with enthusiasts and advocates for the profession engineering and implementing programs from the top to benefit the membership.  There are always those in the know who fill the organizational space available and run the show.  Ten percent lead, 20 percent actively follow and 70 percent share the benefits of the activity of the other 10-30%.

When the AOA was steered into the direction of Board Certification, the leadership had a concept of wanting to protect the profession from envisioned discrimination, their personal practice position and anyone who would follow. Those who would not follow would be left out of the game.  Not since the 7th Cavalry has there been such a wrongheaded rush to “glory.” The proponents could not define the problem, only envision a problem, and seek “information” from insurers who are now beginning to see Board Certification as a problem.  Well, time, treasure and talent have been my traditional contributions to Optometry through practice, public lectures, teaching at Optometry colleges and meetings, service on State and National Boards, as well as designing and administering didactic and practical examinations.

After 34 years or so of personal AOA membership I view the organization as running off the tracks. I joined AOS to find like minded professionals, who support the principles of continuing educational competency and recognition of sub-specialty expertise, as recognized in medicine.  Board Certification in Optometry with examination eligibility established by clinical tenure and experience is a redundancy of the initial boards most of us had to pass nationally and in each state.  In effect, each state now requiring National Boards for state licensure is recognizing the basic level of practice competency as certified by the National Board organization. .  Only residencies in clinical sub-specialties or clinical work therein would support board certification in that specialty.

I come from a liberal arts background from Colby College in Maine.  I spent 4 years as a Strategic Air Command Nuclear Launch Officer under the Montana outback.  At Montana State, I  completed my undergraduate science course studies (62 hours in three academic quarters plus those interminable labs.)  Pacific University provided the OD and NBEO, OR, CA and MT all had a look at me as I passed their board examinations.  I began practice in Medford, OR in 1979

For twenty years I had a Satellite practice in Happy Camp, CA and yes it is just as you picture it.  I always hoped that the last patient would not show up to allow extra time fishing for steelhead and salmon on the Klamath River.

Two children, now grown got me back on skis.  Family travel took us all over the western US and parts of Mexico.

Then I went crazy.

For ten years I worked with a private foundation I commandeered, Project HOPE and Rotary International to deliver about $18 million dollars of humanitarian aide to Kamchatka, Russia. I spent several hundred days in Russia over 10 years, and loved every minute of working at my former ground zero target (see Air Force reference above).

After twenty five or so years in clinical practice where I often serve the poorer and needier patients, my family encouraged me to develop a subspecialty in neuro-optometry.  After a couple of years as an outside consultant, invited to the hospital per case, I was invited to join the staff of two local Medical Centers and Hospitals.  I work in the Neuro- rehab unit and participate in case conferences designing and assigning programs for Occupational and Physical therapists to implement.  I am occasionally called to the intensive care and critical care units for pre transfer planning.

After: surviving a drop over a 150 cliff and multiple roll-overs in my Suburban ( yea GM engineers)  and landing strapped in under water in  the Klamath River on a bitter January day; being held at gunpoint in Russia by the FSB for, inexplicable to them,  service and coordination gifts  of a humanitarian aid: and a few years back having a coronary artery plumbed and stented, I guess I view life a little differently.  Every day is a gift to open, and savor.  

Douglas G Smith OD