Lynn Girdlestone, MHA, COA, OSA, OSC, Practice Manager, Sumnicht Eye Care, discusses what shaped her as a technician.

Video Transcript edited for clarity.

My name is Lynn Girdlestone. I am a certified ophthalmic technician at Sumnicht Eye Care in Edmonds, Washington. I'm going to talk a little bit today about what shaped me as a technician. I have been an ophthalmic technician for over a decade. I started in optometry while I was in undergrad as an optometric technician at a LensCrafters and then eventually made my way to become a certified optician and a licensed optician. And then eventually, I left optometry and got into ophthalmology looking to really challenge myself and to learn and grow and learn more about the eyeballs. I am a bit of an eye nerd in general. I really enjoy working with eyes and I really enjoy working with the geriatric population that we see because as we get older, eyes get older and they develop things. And I really enjoy hearing the patient stories from all of the older patients that we have about how their grandkids are progressing in school or doing sports or doing cool activities or the vacations that they go on and stuff like that.

So I have really found my happy place in the older eyeball population as far as patients go. As far as what has really shaped me as a technician, I would have to give credit to the really wonderful doctors that I have worked with over the course of my career. It started out when I was in optometry, learning from the optometrist that was there at LensCrafters. She took the newbie under her wing and any little piece of information she could teach you at any given time, she was like, "Oh, Lynn, come look at this. Oh, Lynn, come learn about this. Oh, this is the result of the test that you took earlier." And so there was never really such thing as a stupid question with her and she was always just very willing to share that information.

And as I got into ophthalmology, I was extremely fortunate to work with very similar doctors with that mindset that, "Oh, you want to learn about the things that you're doing, you want to actually help patients? I'm happy to teach you." Whether that was in surgery or testing or educating patients or whenever I had questions about refractions or how to measure pressure or what pressure fluctuations meant—almost every single doctor I've worked with has always been just very forthcoming in wanting to teach and to educate. And I've been able to take that same concept of just teaching those who are new into eyes and teaching new technicians that I train or medical students that come in and shadow because they're in pre-med and they need shadow time or helping teach patients the information that they need about their own issues going on like glaucoma or macular degeneration or dry eye or blepharitis, really just being forthcoming with information in the appropriate setting. So if it's written down in the chart, I'm happy to translate it to patients or techs or primary care doctors that call in and have questions.

It's really not gatekeeping information. It has been some of the best information I've ever really received and help and teaching. And I kind of wish some of my high school or undergrad teachers would have used that same kind of approach. And I think that would be super beneficial to all people looking to go into any medical field—just to have that ability to ask a question and not be met with like, "Oh, you're just a technician, you don't need to know that." Or "It's not super relevant to the thing that we're talking about, don't worry about that."

That is probably by far having someone really take the time even when they're super busy and we've got 5 patients waiting to just quickly answer a question and then later elaborate on it. That's been the biggest thing I think that has really helped shape me as a technician. It helps me want to come to work every day so I can learn more and it's something really appreciated.

One key thing that I would like to add is that doctors taking the time to train their staff and help them feel comfortable is sometimes more effective as a training tool than having a tech trainer or someone come in and try to whirlwind train somebody from the ground up. Those little tiny tidbits of education here and there has really been effective for how I train technicians and it is very empowering having it come directly from the doctor that as a whole, if we want to keep growing the amount of staff that are trained up over the years, I think having the buy-in directly from the doctor is really, really influential and a positive resource.

 

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