For Dr. Erin Rueff, there is almost something miraculous in being an optometrist who specializes in the area of cornea and contact lenses. Accounting, of course, for the years of study and the steady progress of treatments that enable it, the experience of providing care that is almost instantaneously transformative has always been deeply moving to Dr. Rueff.
“I’ve always wanted to be in the health profession and I truly love how optometry allows you to quickly impact someone’s everyday health and needs,” she says. “My specialty in contact lenses seems to be one of the few areas of medicine where a patient walks into your room essentially disabled, you design a lens for them, and they walk out able-bodied, ready to do whatever they need to do in their lives – with no surgery and no healing time.”
LIFELONG LEARNER, EXCEPTIONAL EDUCATOR
It’s not a bad metaphor for Dr. Rueff’s work as an educator. She prides herself on designing ways for her students to see and comprehend very complex concepts more clearly, breaking them down into simpler parts to make them more accessible. Her career as a professor grew out of her identity as a lifelong learner and a persistent researcher. When Dr. Rueff reached the point in her education where she was seeing patients all day, every day, she found it just slightly lacking – she still had a lot of curiosity left, and a desire to hone her clinical and research skills further. Teaching at MBKU has given her the opportunity to embrace and fulfill many roles in optometry.
“I found that the extra onus you have to not only be accountable to your patients, but also to be accountable to your students, really makes you the best doctor you can be,” she says. “At MBKU, where there is such an excellent faculty who puts so much thought and effort into quality teaching, I’m able to see patients, to teach students, and to do research, and that’s really the full circle of contributing to the profession. Being a part of each of those aspects makes me better at the other one. Seeing
patients makes me ask better research questions, and working with students makes me think harder about the rationale for my clinical care.”
A FOCUS ON STUDENTS
At MBKU, where a philosophy of student-centered teaching is combined with a small family-type atmosphere, professors like Dr. Rueff are able to see their work as very directly serving the next generation of optometrists. “I try to spend a lot of time with students outside of class as a resource for them, talking to them about what they’ve experienced, giving them advice about things like residency, jobs and how to survive boards season.”
Dr. Rueff is also able to directly model one of the chief ways optometrists serve their profession, working as the faculty-student liaison for the American Academy of Optometry student club. It’s another way in which her fulfilling career has come full circle, as she can mentor, teach and support young optometry students in much the same way she herself was.