I concur with Mark, having been a Medical Photographer from 1972, who specialised in Ophthalmic Photography while working in the Medical Photography Department, eventually to be invited by the Professor of Surgery to become a full time Ophthalmic Photographer in Ophthalmology. That "natural progression" Mark mentioned.
Some 40 years later, I now have an assistant who has been with me for 8 years, and has a far better command of IT and computer issues than me, and I gladly let her take the reins in that department.
As far as other duties, she does what I do, and as well, I might add, making my future transition to retirement less stressful knowing I have left the Ophthalmology Unit in good hands. :o)
Anton Drew On 10/08/2012, at 1:13 AM, Mark Maio wrote:
My observations on gender, having started in ophthalmic photography in 1978 after beginning my career in 1975 as a medical photographer.Most ophthalmic photographers back in the 70’s started as medical photographers. The majority of ophthalmic photography (a new sub specialty of medicine) was being done in teaching hospitals and it required not only the knowledge of diagnostic imaging but also running a full service darkroom and imaging support for research and educational projects. Medical photographers were recruited or applied for ophthalmic photography positions as a natural progression of furthering their careers. Back then I explained my job as doing diagnostic imaging of the eye and at the same time doing all the additional functions of a medical photographer in support of the ophthalmology department. The majority of these photographers were male.As many university programs started retina fellowships, a good number of these new specialists in ophthalmology chose to go into private practice rather than academics. As they did, the need for retina photography in private practice increased and many ophthalmic technicians started doing the photography, the majority of which were women. I remember sitting down with Paul Montague as he was OPS President in the mid 80’s and I was on the BOD and discussing the change in gender makeup of the OPS. At the time it was around 50/50. We looked at the BOD and BOE and saw that men made up the majority of members running the OPS and decided to start looking for and encouraging women to run for those positions. We figured that if 50% of our organization was female, that percentage should be reflected in the governing bodies. I continued this same philosophy for the four years I was President after Paul. It would be interesting for someone to do a retrospective look at the male/female makeup of the OPS over the years. My guess is that the OPS is probably 75% female.I agree with Marty that I don’t think there is a difference between men and women in photographic or computer problem solving ability or skills. While working as an ophthalmic photographer I needed to learn to troubleshoot my equipment to make sure I could continue doing diagnostic imaging on patients every day. Did I enjoy it? No! I did it because I needed to do it. I have no need to know how my camera or computer works, I just need to use it to do my job. On the other hand I know women in our field who are excellent at both troubleshooting their diagnostic imaging equipment and are quite the “geek” when it comes to their computers.Mark Mark Maio InVision, Inc. 5445 Buckhollow Drive Alpharetta, GA 30005 markmaio@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx 404-386-5676 Consultant in ophthalmic and biomedical imaging. Member of Adobe's Biomedical Imaging Advisory Group My fine art photography is represented by Lumiere: http://lumieregallery.net/wp/?p=254
