October | November - Missouri Optometric Association
October | November - Missouri Optometric Association
October | November - Missouri Optometric Association
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<strong>October</strong> | <strong>November</strong> 2008<br />
President’s Message<br />
I want to begin by thanking each and every one of you<br />
for showing your support for the <strong>Missouri</strong> <strong>Optometric</strong><br />
<strong>Association</strong> and our great profession of optometry.<br />
Optometry...why do we practice this profession?<br />
I’m not here to tell you why you specifically practice<br />
optometry, because all of us have made that decision<br />
for different reasons. However, I am here to challenge<br />
your thinking about optometry.<br />
• We know optometry is ranked in the top 10<br />
to 15 best jobs in the country by numerous<br />
publications. The outlook for demand is positive<br />
although we have many battles ahead.<br />
Wes Kemp, O.D., MOA President<br />
• We know optometry allows us to feed our families and in most cases have a<br />
decent and comfortable lifestyle.<br />
• We know in this day and age when many are losing their jobs, the economy<br />
is tight and there’s not a lot of optimistic talk about the future, people will<br />
continue to need healthy eyes, and good vision to perform in society. Look at<br />
Third World countries and see how they struggle when vision and eye health<br />
care is not taken care of properly.<br />
It is a service to humankind we need to reflect on. I seriously believe if we took<br />
away the fact that our profession is ranked in the top 10 best jobs, if we took<br />
away quality of life and income that we receive for our services, and even if we<br />
took away the consistent need for healthy eyes, most of us would still be in this<br />
profession because it is our nature to serve and help others.<br />
If we took the Meyers Briggs Personality Scale, I believe most of us would score<br />
high in the area of caring for others.<br />
There are many hoops we have to jump through and many opportunities to become<br />
disgruntled with our jobs. Things like:<br />
• dealing with insurance companies which many times brings out the worst in<br />
us;<br />
• being concerned about potential threats of lawsuits;<br />
• dealing with the frustration of health care, as the rules continue to change,<br />
sometimes daily; and<br />
2<br />
• dealing with the thoughts that optometry is not what we thought it was going<br />
to be because of incorrect expectations. Continued, next page.
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