Editorial
In 2002 the business world was shaken with corporate scandal on a massive scale. It was discovered that executives—people who were millionaires to begin with—had stolen billions from their middle-class employees, robbing them of their future. Loyalty and hard work were rewarded with betrayal. What would make a person do such a thing? Just how much money is “enough?”
Though the Enron or WorldCom scandals may not have personally touched many of us, the cancer that caused them is threatening our world, too. What do you do if you are an academic orthoptist in the business of medicine? It used to be “publish or perish.” Now the credo is “profit or perish.” And if you are an academic, your problem is that there is usually no profit in academic pursuits. There is no monetary gain to be found in posing a scientific question, researching it, and publishing the results. There is no money to be made by taking the time to give a lecture to a class of residents. One does not become a millionaire by doing vision screening. There is no path to independent wealth found by reading journals or attending seminars, no secret to success in spending a day at a career fair to recruit potential orthoptic students. No one could deny the importance of these things: they are critical to our future. But many in the business of medicine deny their value. They do not directly generate revenue and are therefore gradually being put aside as activities for our “spare time.”
There are those who believe there is no such thing as an “academic orthoptist.” To them, “orthoptist” is synonymous with “technician,” and our job is to see as many patients as possible in an eight-hour day. They may say we are fooling ourselves if we think otherwise. And while quality patient care is noble and an integral part of being an orthoptist, I say we always have a choice in who we are. It is human nature to label and categorize the people and things around us. It is a part of how we analyze and make sense of our environment. It helps us to feel more secure in a dynamic and changeable world. But what is important is how we label ourselves, not in how others label us. We have the choice to accept or reject the labels others attempt to impose on us.
What do you do if you find yourself an academic in a business world? As your world changes around you, you can choose to change with it, to fight it from within, or to find a new world to live in. As long as we are true to ourselves, there is no incorrect choice. Every one of us has a fresh opportunity to make that choice every day.