The Learning Curve

Prior to serving at the Princeton Vision Clinic, I had minimal experience with children. To be honest, I was quite nervous about how I would fare throughout the year. Would I be able to get first graders to listen to me? Would the high schoolers treat me like a substitute teacher? I envisioned myself being quite uncomfortable as I adjusted to this new environment. Consequently, I was really nervous the first time I performed a vision screening on a patient.

I admit that in the beginning, I felt awkward with patients. I didn't know how to talk to children, let alone how to walk them through tests at the eye doctor. But as each day went on, I learned what techniques worked, what techniques didn't, what jokes were funny, and what jokes flopped. Eventually, I became comfortable and confident working with kids of all ages. Throughout the service term, my fellow Vision Promoter, Maddie Engeler, and I performed vision tests on patients ranging from 2 to 22 years old and we frequently interacted with even younger accompanying baby siblings.

As you might imagine, the technique for trying to get a 2-year-old to tell you what shapes they see is much different than for a 20-year-old. Additionally, when it comes to taking a scan of a patient's eye, the main obstacle with kindergarteners is attention span, while the main obstacle with high schoolers is falling asleep. I found that each age group has its own challenges, but also its own perks. I especially enjoyed having preschoolers because they're so fun and they do adorable things, like saying'Spongebot" instead of Spongebob and'Stikachu" instead of Pikachu.

This year also shattered my perception that it is impossible to get young children to focus long enough to perform reliable testing on them. It was certainly challenging to convince 3-year-olds that none of the tests would hurt, but it was also very rewarding when I was able to get through all the tests and surprise even the parents. Even more rewarding, we were able to obtain eye scans of 6-year-olds even though it was previously assumed children this young could not sit for these scans.

Despite my initial hesitations, I have truly enjoyed working with children this year. While I do not want to specialize in pediatrics, I still look forward to interacting with children as a future physician. Sometimes it required a little extra effort of being silly or telling a cringe-worthy dad joke, but I could not be happier with my decision to challenge myself this year with NHC Chicago at the Princeton Vision Clinic.

This blog post was written by NHC Chicago 2016-17 member Josh Finkel.

Josh is a Vision Promoter at the Illinois Eye Institute at CPS Princeton School.