Travel Optometry: What It Is, Perks & Challenges, and How To Start

In this episode, Drs. Fred and Riyad dive into the world of travel optometry—what it is, perks & challenges, and how to get started. Dr. Fred shares stories from practicing in rural Newfoundland and Manitoba, where eye care is often scarce but deeply impactful. From iceberg views on the way to clinic to unexpected emergencies, he reflects on how this career path reshaped his perspective on work and fulfillment.

We also introduce our new segment, Monday Fuel, where we share small but meaningful moments that help kickstart the week—from latte art to conversations with strangers.

Whether you’re an optometrist curious about travel work, a student exploring career options, or simply someone looking for inspiration on designing a meaningful career, this episode offers both practical insights and stories.

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Dr. Fred's connection points:

Free Sunday Newsletter: https://www.fredhcho.com/#/portal

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fredhcho/

Transcript

Riyad Khamis 0:16

We're really excited for you to join us today. Today Fred and I are gonna have some conversations about travel optometry and also different things. So how are things going, Fred?

Fred H. Cho 0:27

I'm traveling for work next week, so I have a whole week off. So it's been great catching up on sleep and I've just been actually getting into latte art. I'm not very good at it, so it kind of looks like this right now.

Riyad Khamis 0:40

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 0:41

of say that it's like a daily horoscope for me'cause I'll look into it and be like, oh, today I see this, or something

Riyad Khamis 0:47

What do I see? That's funny. I yeah. My feed recently has been a lot of, you know, I don't know if you click on one video and everything comes up, it's been a lot of. Latte and iced coffee making. There's like a scene in Harry Potter. I remember the video where they look into a cup and they see like a dog in that symbolizes something. So maybe symbolizes your future a little bit there.

Fred H. Cho 1:08

Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 1:09

Oh,

Fred H. Cho 1:10

you?

Riyad Khamis 1:10

It's been busy, I think, back to school. So for me, this is. Sports time, so I get to watch football. Yesterday was opening kickoff for the NFL season, which is exciting. And then hockey kicks off too. So some of the OHL teams and the, and the WHL teams I'm working with, the training camps are in full force now. So I get to now work with some of the teams and the players and also get to watch them, so, yeah, I, it fall's a great time.

Fred H. Cho 1:33

Yeah. Yeah. Get those golf seasons in.

Riyad Khamis 1:36

Yes. Get, get that score down as much as I can. Yeah. And where are you heading off to?

Fred H. Cho 1:41

So it's called Springdale. I've previously to East end of the Newfoundland Island, but this time I'll be going to the West End. It's actually, the island is actually quite big,

Riyad Khamis 1:53

it's probably not too close to a big city, I would assume. Right.

Fred H. Cho 1:57

So the airport is in deer Lake, so that has a direct flight from where I am, and, and then it's an hour drive, so not

Riyad Khamis 2:06

Okay. Okay. So like you can fly from Pearson to Deer Lake straight.

Fred H. Cho 2:11

yeah,

Riyad Khamis 2:11

interesting. Okay.

Fred H. Cho 2:13

popular enough that they opened up a new route on Porter, so

Riyad Khamis 2:16

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 2:17

must be a, something there. There is enough of a demand.

Riyad Khamis 2:20

Ah, okay. Okay. Porter's been clutch. Yeah. We're actually gonna introduce a new segment. We're gonna call it Monday Fuel. So initially we're just gonna share some things that maybe we've been integrating into our lifestyle or things we've heard just to fuel us up on Monday morning. Kind of get us through the week. So do you have any tips to share

Fred H. Cho 2:38

Something as simple as having a brunch and coffee with a friend. That was really nice. As I mentioned, I had a week off, but.

Riyad Khamis 2:47

All right.

Fred H. Cho 2:48

It was like 10:00 AM on a weekday, like Wednesday morning.

Riyad Khamis 2:53

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 2:53

I was with a friend. He also reduced his optometry work days to pursue other passions

Riyad Khamis 3:00

Interesting.

Fred H. Cho 3:00

him. It's tattoo artist. So that's what he does. I remember we're just sitting there with a bunch of like retired people. In the diner and thinking like, you know, we may not be rich in money, but we're rich in time. And it was just a moment

Riyad Khamis 3:18

right.

Fred H. Cho 3:18

yeah, this is kind of neat. This is cool. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 3:21

It's amazing how sometimes just something simple like that in conversation can really fuel you for the week. It was actually my wife that was saying that one day we were traveling somewhere and we stopped at McDonald's really quickly. She was waiting for her coffee and this older gentleman came to her and was just talking, and he's like, yeah, every. Every Sunday I take a coffee with my wife, we travel to this park an hour away. We just like hang out at the park He's like in his eighties and, and he was asking about her and he was like, you have an amazing day. It was so nice to meet you. And that like made her day. So sometimes just like simple conversations with people and just. Saying hi to people. It can be such a big, powerful tool as well.

Fred H. Cho 4:02

Especially when it comes to strangers, it makes you feel better than you think, right? Yeah. I love that.

Riyad Khamis 4:07

So we've had a lot of questions and I know I've had some students actually reach out to me and ask more about travel optometry and saying, okay, so how does this work? So. I thought this would be a great episode to really dive into what is travel optometry, Dr. Fred Cho is a travel optometrist, and he's licensed now in Ontario, Manitoba, and Newfoundland. He has combined his love with travel with a deeper purpose, which is bringing eyecare to rural and underserved communities. Beyond the exam room. Dr. Cho is a writer, and speaker on work Happiness for Professionals. Just talking about the tattoo story, you write an amazing blog and it's, it's nice. It's not like super long. It's right to the point. And I always learn stuff from it there as well. So I would encourage you guys to subscribe to Fred's blog and you'll get it in your inbox every Sunday, I believe. Is that right?

Fred H. Cho 4:54

Yep. Yeah, thanks.

Riyad Khamis 4:55

I mean,

Fred H. Cho 4:56

It's

Riyad Khamis 4:56

yes. Yeah, and it definitely has a lot of interesting reads and I know you do a lot of reading, so, so you can put some of that stuff in there too, which is great as well. Saves us from having to read all the long stuff. You kind of summarize some of things. All right, we never let our guests off the hook so we're not letting you off the hook as well. So start off with a tough question. Was there a time you didn't enjoy travel optometry at all,

Fred H. Cho 5:20

Personally I found the ocular emergencies to be difficult

Riyad Khamis 5:26

Mm.

Fred H. Cho 5:26

in a big city I have access to a wide network of, you know, hospitals and ophthalmologists and save the appointments if I need. that's just not the case. So when I started my work in Manitoba, and this is like, it's this little place called De Paw that's seven hours away from Winnipeg. That's the major city. So their hospital, local one is not equipped for any eye stuff. Even something as simple as foreign, body in the eye gets sent to me, a red eye

Riyad Khamis 5:57

Right.

Fred H. Cho 5:58

But that also means stuff like scleritis and. I mean like dislocated, IOL, like stuff like that. I had to be the one to find them help somehow.

Riyad Khamis 6:09

Right.

Fred H. Cho 6:10

was a lot of learning too.

Riyad Khamis 6:12

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 6:13

but in hindsight that was actually for my own growth as an optometrist. yeah, it's, it's, I think it was like the necessary pain to get to where I want to be. But when I'm actually doing the work, that was the most challenging part of travel optometry.

Riyad Khamis 6:31

Okay. It's not necessarily, yeah, and, and I mean, it forces you to really kind of l take your knowledge to the next level so that's great. And it just take us through like a, like your last recent trip.

Fred H. Cho 6:42

I was in Newfoundland a few months ago in

Riyad Khamis 6:46

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 6:46

small town called Bonne Vista one of the reasons why Newfoundland is so special and I want to explore it, is that it's the easiest place to view icebergs from land. So. I mean, on my drive to work there which by the way has no traffic. And zero

Riyad Khamis 7:04

helps. Okay.

Fred H. Cho 7:06

yeah. So it was just a

Riyad Khamis 7:07

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 7:08

And it took like two minutes to drive to work. But on my drive, a big iceberg that was floating into the

Riyad Khamis 7:16

Oh wow.

Fred H. Cho 7:18

And I spoke to a local there who said she grew up there all her life and just 30 to 40 years ago. She said there would be thousands of icebergs like floating into the coastline every year and even into the late spring. They would just hang around and her father, who was a fisherman, had to wait months at a time for the ice to thaw so that he can go out fishing again. So, I mean, it's a magical place and you might appreciate this riyad'cause I know some local breweries actually harvest these chunks of icebergs and they'll

Riyad Khamis 7:53

Right.

Fred H. Cho 7:54

out of it. It.

Riyad Khamis 7:54

Oh, wow. Huh.

Fred H. Cho 7:56

yeah, this, this is like 20,000 year old water that they use I don't know, it's a marketing gimmick, but honestly it tastes really good. It

Riyad Khamis 8:07

and fresh.

Fred H. Cho 8:08

sparkling water quality to it. I can't exactly describe it.

Riyad Khamis 8:12

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 8:12

placebo, but I You, you gotta try it. I'll

Riyad Khamis 8:15

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 8:16

actually. It's, it's so good.

Riyad Khamis 8:18

Yeah, no, that sounds amazing. And it definitely, yeah, you're like drinking history, which is, which is kind of cool too as well. And also the thing with no traffic or no stoplights right now, that seems like a dream especially for everyone living in Toronto and London right now with all the kids back at school. You can't get anywhere without being stopped now. And then what about in terms of the actual work part of it? Just to touch on that, so I know kind of you went there and how many days do you typically work there or, and what are the hours like typically?

Fred H. Cho 8:48

The nice thing is that I get to set the hours

Riyad Khamis 8:51

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 8:52

pace at which I see patients. Usually

Riyad Khamis 8:54

Yep.

Fred H. Cho 8:54

flexible with that. And I usually go one to two weeks at a time.'cause my home base, as you know, is Ontario and my family's here as well, so I can't be away for too long. One to two weeks is like a good sweet spot where I can still get through a good number of patients and still do some good work there, but not be away from home too long. At

Riyad Khamis 9:19

Right, right.

Fred H. Cho 9:20

for me. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 9:21

Yeah. And, and just a quick question on that let's say you had a patient that you're like, ah, maybe they need a follow up. How does that typically work?

Fred H. Cho 9:30

In Newfoundland, they have this centralized system for referral,

Riyad Khamis 9:35

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 9:36

no referral gets lost, which is amazing. In Ontario, it's like you gotta refer

Riyad Khamis 9:41

Yeah. Multiple times.

Fred H. Cho 9:42

they're like, oh, we didn't get it. It's like, oh, okay. Well, so you have to constantly keep a tab on it. But in Newfoundland you don't have to do that. So they have this online portal where you

Riyad Khamis 9:51

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 9:52

your referral and it gets triaged by them. And every referral gets sent to their correct ophthalmologist with the specialty.

Riyad Khamis 10:01

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 10:02

yeah, I mean if I really can't do a follow up, then I'll, I'll send it out. I'll, I'll refer out,

Riyad Khamis 10:07

All right.

Fred H. Cho 10:08

is another OD coming, then I will arrange a follow up. But but yeah, that, that's one thing that I want to make sure that I continue to care because these people, like, a lot of them really need, like, for example, cataract surgery

Riyad Khamis 10:22

Right. Right. Yeah. Okay. Well,

Fred H. Cho 10:25

it. It just

Riyad Khamis 10:25

okay.

Fred H. Cho 10:26

this year.

Riyad Khamis 10:27

Oh, perfect. Okay. Yeah, and that helps'cause then you, it takes one less thing for you to worry about. And then in terms of travel optometry, I know you've talked about a little bit about the perks, but what would you say your favorite parts, so people are who are like, oh, maybe this is for me. What would you say your favorite parts are for it?

Fred H. Cho 10:42

Well, I gotta say, of course, travel is a

Riyad Khamis 10:46

Need to see the world.

Fred H. Cho 10:48

Yeah, my mom's a geography teacher, Riyad,

Riyad Khamis 10:51

interesting. I didn't know that.

Fred H. Cho 10:52

made it. Yeah, she made it a point to take our family on a trip, summer, new every summer, vacation, every

Riyad Khamis 10:59

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 10:59

And then, you know, as a kid I didn't really appreciate much, but looking back, it's actually really like those memories that I really cherish a lot.

Riyad Khamis 11:08

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 11:09

But yeah, travel's amazing. You know, I've never been to newfound before. I haven't been to St. John And that's a direct flight as well, right? Amazing city. travel has to be up there for sure, but also making a huge impact. Like imagine driving hours just to get your glasses. Right, that's unthinkable in big city like where we live, but that's the reality for most of Canada.

Riyad Khamis 11:33

Right.

Fred H. Cho 11:34

whenever I go to travel optometry, it's a reminder of the work that we do and how valuable it really is.

Riyad Khamis 11:43

Yes.

Fred H. Cho 11:45

I would say freedom over my work. And that

Riyad Khamis 11:48

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 11:49

motivator as well. Yeah, having to choose when I work and where I work and who I work with, like these are all kind of important questions for me. So I would say, yeah, traveling, making an impact and freedom over work.

Riyad Khamis 12:05

And that definitely sounds like the recipe for, for happiness in terms of work stuff, even just with some of the guests we've talked to as well. So, no, that, that is definitely very motivating there as well. But I know there's probably some stuff that comes challenges with it. I'm sure people are thinking that home. So what are some of the challenges that come with travel optometry?

Fred H. Cho 12:26

Yeah, it's like I, I touched on this earlier, but it would be the emergencies that you have to deal with, and sometimes things can be beyond our scope, like some scleritis like. Well, tech actually, all scleritis, as you know, is technically beyond their scope. But this patient has to be treated on

Riyad Khamis 12:46

Right.

Fred H. Cho 12:47

to do something. So yeah, it's, it's little niche cases like that where you're, we're, you're really quite alone out there. And you have to try to do the best that you can. And I remember like the first time I was flipping through, I'm like, how do I treat this again? And like, what can I do?

Riyad Khamis 13:03

Heavier Will's eye manual.

Fred H. Cho 13:04

they can be, yeah. It can be maintained until they see a specialist. I mean, I've seen some wild stuff out there. that's, so that's one challenge. But another challenge is, A lot of people don't know what optometrists do, so they don't know, for example, that we do diabetic retinopathy screening, but they have these screening sites set up

Riyad Khamis 13:25

Oh, interesting.

Fred H. Cho 13:26

really sure what the difference is between, you know,

Riyad Khamis 13:29

Right.

Fred H. Cho 13:30

screening centers versus coming to us for actually full eye exam. So yeah, that's part of the challenge that I see in travel optometry. At least from the patient perspective because they tend to be in rural areas and part of the issue is like there's poor access, but they also don't know

Riyad Khamis 13:48

Right, the education.

Fred H. Cho 13:50

we do. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 13:51

Right. Is the just on that, is there a lot of these rural places? Do they all have like screening centers? And what are screening centers? Like? What, what do they do?

Fred H. Cho 14:01

The screening center is really just for diabetes'cause that's so common

Riyad Khamis 14:06

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 14:06

the. Specifically I go to Manitoba and they have a lot of indigenous

Riyad Khamis 14:13

Yep.

Fred H. Cho 14:14

and diabetes, unfortunately is very common in that population. So yeah, that's really beneficial for just having an accessible diabetic screening center.

Riyad Khamis 14:25

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 14:26

of course, it's just a red camera. It's not even OCT, so

Riyad Khamis 14:30

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 14:30

something. They don't really look into a comprehensive vision like we

Riyad Khamis 14:34

Right, right.

Fred H. Cho 14:36

but even the, like government health officials, they don't really know the difference. So, yeah, I know our classmate, Dr. Zang, he's he's got a clinic out there, so he's really advocating for more funding so that people can get the care that they need.

Riyad Khamis 14:53

Right.

Fred H. Cho 14:54

he's, he's actually found a lot of joy in pursuing kind of that side of

Riyad Khamis 14:59

And helping people out.

Fred H. Cho 15:00

change and yeah, making a bigger impact. So.

Riyad Khamis 15:04

Okay, interesting. So screenings there just to kinda, yeah. Take a re photo and then but it can kind of lead them to, to, or just the education on the eye exam portion is important.

Fred H. Cho 15:14

I forgot to explain this, but the travel optometry, I see it as a combination of rural optometry,

Riyad Khamis 15:23

Yep.

Fred H. Cho 15:24

plus locum. That's

Riyad Khamis 15:26

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 15:26

I see just by the virtue of supply and demand, these remote areas don't have eye doctors, so they need someone to come in.

Riyad Khamis 15:36

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 15:37

But the flip side of that is that I also can ask for more flexibility, for example. So what started out as a locum career initially for. eventually kind of turned into a rural travel optometry, which is

Riyad Khamis 15:52

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 15:52

how, like, it's interesting how things interact that way.

Riyad Khamis 15:55

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 15:56

but yeah. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 15:57

Just an interesting thing on this story, I did a residency in Taliqua, Oklahoma which is that rural Oklahoma. And we were they don't really have same sort of thing, no ophthalmologists. And we're on call. And I remember getting called at 2:00 AM for my first on-call case, which someone got stabbed in the eye. And I was like, I do not remember this from school. And and yeah, so I mean, sometimes you get thrown in, you have your Will's high manual and you just. Like, and, and sometimes that's the best learning. Like you feel really good about it after, right? Of how you helped people as well.

Fred H. Cho 16:27

Oh my Was that really scary for you? Like

Riyad Khamis 16:30

It initially, like there was a lot, and it probably the same as you felt. There was a lot, like that was just the tip of the iceberg, quote unquote from it. But yeah, there was just so many condi and you're by yourself and, and you always have help if you need it, but like you learn to manage things. I found that that independence of. Not relying on, oh, I'm just gonna send this out'cause I'm not sure. You learn to manage things on your own and really kind of challenge your education. And I think that's, there's a passion to that as well, right? It reignites that learning and that and that passion for optometry though, as well. You may have already known the information or known how to do it, but you get way more confidence with it, I think is the big thing, right?

Fred H. Cho 17:09

Yeah, that's a great point. Growth is key for any kind of fulfillment that you

Riyad Khamis 17:14

Right.

Fred H. Cho 17:15

from Job. It's, it's competency growth. These are things that we strive for in life as well, not

Riyad Khamis 17:21

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And, from our end who, may not know a lot about travel optometry, is it hard to find work? Is it really easier or how. How does that even happen? So yeah, maybe talk a little bit about that and then maybe touch a little bit about how it impacts.'cause I would think the stability of home life when we're traveling, that may be a difficult thing. Or how does it impact personal life and relationships as well.

Fred H. Cho 17:46

So let's break that down. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 17:47

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 17:48

terms of how easy it is to find work, it, it's. Easy. Yeah, it's easy

Riyad Khamis 17:53

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 17:54

Canada's a big place. There's a lot of remote towns that need eye doctors.

Riyad Khamis 18:00

Hmm

Fred H. Cho 18:00

even get glasses where I go. Right?

Riyad Khamis 18:03

hmm.

Fred H. Cho 18:03

in because they haven't gotten new glasses in like five years and they

Riyad Khamis 18:07

Right, right.

Fred H. Cho 18:09

because they don't know when the next time a doc eye doctor will be in. So there's a lot of opportunity out there for travel optometry. And what I do is work with a company that has a lot of locations, so it's easy for me. I'm not making a new connection every single time.

Riyad Khamis 18:27

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 18:28

already at the same company, and we just organize like, okay, where do you need me to go? And then I'll go to different

Riyad Khamis 18:34

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 18:36

and yeah, it's just, I think it's just supply and demand, right?

Riyad Khamis 18:40

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 18:41

to kind of go where your needs are the highest, and that's also where you can do the most amount of good work. So,

Riyad Khamis 18:48

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 18:49

but yeah, there's opportunities everywhere. You just, you just have to look for it really. And

Riyad Khamis 18:52

Right. Yeah. Okay. I guess once your name starts to get out a little more or you're, you've kind of said you're interested in this area, then other people start to pick it up and everything like that.

Fred H. Cho 19:04

Definitely,

Riyad Khamis 19:05

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 19:06

you mentioned this earlier too, but was an unexpected fork on my journey. I, I didn't.

Riyad Khamis 19:13

Right,

Fred H. Cho 19:14

Set out to become a travel optometrist. After burning out, I, I switched to freelance started my blog, which also didn't have an end goal. I just started the blog because I wanted to write.

Riyad Khamis 19:28

right.

Fred H. Cho 19:29

that this turned into anything. unexpectedly a colleague read my blog article about my locum work, and then she connected me to a company Newfoundland that has a bunch of locations. And

Riyad Khamis 19:42

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 19:42

that's kind of how unexpectedly the travel optometry side began.

Riyad Khamis 19:47

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 19:48

I always find it fascinating that a Creative Passion project opened up all these interesting doors that I didn't even think of. So that's another reason why I said yes. When you asked me, Hey, maybe we should start a podcast together. I'm like,

Riyad Khamis 20:03

Right.

Fred H. Cho 20:04

you

Riyad Khamis 20:05

Yes. Oh, that's super interesting. So what about the, the second part of the question, so I know that it sounds great, but like, how does it affect personal life and relationships and stability in general?

Fred H. Cho 20:16

Well, just by the nature of locum work, it means my schedule is irregular. I do get to choose when I work, but it is still not a regular schedule. So that's something that you have to be comfortable with. And of course, like you mentioned, it does affect family life as well. I mean, you're married as well, and so when you're married, it's. Combined schedule, you have responsibilities that you gotta, you have events coming up together, there is certain amount of like, coordination you gotta do that you, you can't do because of travel optometry.

Riyad Khamis 20:52

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 20:53

And actually the first question that people ask when I say I do travel optometry is always, your wife okay with that?

Riyad Khamis 21:01

Right. Yes.

Fred H. Cho 21:02

a common question, what I always say is I have an amazing wife who's so supportive. I remember when I was quietly burning out a few years ago, which by the way, I didn't know I was burning out either,

Riyad Khamis 21:18

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 21:18

it was my wife who was like, Hey, you seem a bit off. I feel like work is not making you happy. She was the one that encouraged me to try something new. Like, I think you need a change. You need to kind of put yourself out there and try something different. Take a break. And I was the one who was pushing back saying, no, I feel fine. Like, you know, work is supposed to be hard. It's, you know, that's why they call it a job.

Riyad Khamis 21:46

Right.

Fred H. Cho 21:47

When rural optometry. Opportunity came up. Dr. Zang, as you know, our classmate,

Riyad Khamis 21:53

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 21:53

was the one who pushed me a hundred percent. She's like, you should go for it. I think you will love it. You should try it, see if you like it. And, and then there's that. So, back to a question, I mean, yes, it does impact your personal life and you have to manage that side of things, but for me, I am just lucky to have a supportive wife. So that's been not too difficult to deal with.

Riyad Khamis 22:17

Okay. And, and I, and probably just, just because you get to choose, I know some jobs where you're traveling a lot for work and you don't really get to choose. It's like, okay, I'm here this week. I'm here next week. Whereas sounds like at least for yourself, there is that flexibility to, if there's something really important going on in your life that week, you probably aren't gonna be traveling for that week. Right. So you can definitely coordinate your schedule a little bit. Yeah. And that probably helps a whole bunch, I would think, as well.

Fred H. Cho 22:44

Definitely.

Riyad Khamis 22:45

Right. Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 22:46

like, like I mentioned, I have a week off this time, and then when I'm back after week, I took another week off just to help out stuff around the house

Riyad Khamis 22:55

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, that's great. The flexibility is super important. I was presenting to students a little while back, and one of the students well, actually asked me this question because they knew that we had started a podcast and the travel and, and you were in the travel optometry and they thought, you know, this sounds really interesting, but so how does someone get started if someone's interested in it, whether they've been burning out and they're ready, or whether a student, and they're like, I'm, I just want to explore how do we, how do we go about doing it?

Fred H. Cho 23:24

The first step would be to contact big corporations or chains that have multiple locations. Because if you try to piece together from a bunch of different clinics, logistically it's complicated.

Riyad Khamis 23:39

Right.

Fred H. Cho 23:39

deal with one or two, maybe. if they have many locations, then you can easily maneuver and plan out the the, the work. Because being in a locum only work, it means you need, you still need some sort of predictability, not too much

Riyad Khamis 23:58

Yep.

Fred H. Cho 23:59

time. And so working with one or two big companies can really help with that. And I would say making your interest public is also important you just don't know where the opportunities are gonna come from. So

Riyad Khamis 24:14

Right.

Fred H. Cho 24:15

You know, put yourself out there and say that I do this kind of work, then interesting work can come your way. You, that can't happen if you are not out there, if you don't really

Riyad Khamis 24:28

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 24:29

on the, on the web. Right. And I would say that because our work is so valuable. opportunities everywhere. So it's not some rare gem that you gotta get lucky to find. There's so much of Canada that needs eye doctors. A lot of the towns just don't have eye doctors. That's just

Riyad Khamis 24:49

Right, right.

Fred H. Cho 24:50

reality. So forget even basic eye care. Right, like just health screening. They can't even get glasses. And that's

Riyad Khamis 25:00

Right.

Fred H. Cho 25:00

think a lot of times we forget that. Well, how important is that to have a correct pair of prescription glasses that you can actually see and function every day? Well, a lot of people don't have that simple necessity of life. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 25:16

Yeah. And.

Fred H. Cho 25:17

everywhere.

Riyad Khamis 25:18

Okay. And just touching on some of that, and again, I don't wanna, I know every contract can be different or personal, so we don't have to dive too much into it, but would, would there ever be a risk of picking a place where you're traveling all the way there and you're not fully booked up? I know some associates get that when they first take jobs. It's like they take a job and. If there's not enough patients and they've traveled all the way there, so one is there, would it, would that ever happen or have you ever had that experience, or how would you avoid that experience? And B, the travel part of it, like does that add up in terms of expenses or, or in terms of how does that typically work?

Fred H. Cho 25:54

You can mitigate that risk by having a daily minimum

Riyad Khamis 25:59

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 25:59

you are

Riyad Khamis 26:00

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 26:01

Typically I don't need to do that because again, you wanna look for. Well, okay. A guiding principle that I always use is looking for mutual win-win.

Riyad Khamis 26:16

Right,

Fred H. Cho 26:17

when I think about, okay, how can the company win, right? Like

Riyad Khamis 26:22

right.

Fred H. Cho 26:23

dispense and I wanna see a lot of patients and patients a lot of eye care

Riyad Khamis 26:31

Right,

Fred H. Cho 26:31

in years. So I'm looking for like. on everyone

Riyad Khamis 26:36

right. Yep.

Fred H. Cho 26:37

the work is more meaningful. And that naturally means that you have to go to rural areas.

Riyad Khamis 26:44

Yes.

Fred H. Cho 26:44

I go to a big city like St. John for example, I can't find work where it's fully booked up.

Riyad Khamis 26:52

Right.

Fred H. Cho 26:53

the numbers start to not really make sense for me to go out

Riyad Khamis 26:56

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 26:57

And there's just not as much of a need for patients or the company either. So. Yeah, if, if you wanted to go to a big city, know that yes, you're probably gonna have slow days and there's just not much demand for you. But if you go to remote areas, the nature of the supply and demand and kind of where you're most needed. That's just the way it works out to be. But it also means that if you pick well, then you

Riyad Khamis 27:27

Right.

Fred H. Cho 27:28

fully booked schedule.

Riyad Khamis 27:29

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 27:30

I talk to the company I work with every location, they say we have hundreds on our wait list.

Riyad Khamis 27:36

Right, right.

Fred H. Cho 27:37

So we can see as many as you want. We can

Riyad Khamis 27:41

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 27:42

As quickly as you want. It's really completely up to you. And I know that when there's no doctors usually on the locations that I go to, so think about what they do when a doctor's not in. I was curious too about what

Riyad Khamis 28:02

Right.

Fred H. Cho 28:02

Like,

Riyad Khamis 28:03

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 28:03

you can't dispense without prescription,

Riyad Khamis 28:06

Right.

Fred H. Cho 28:07

doctor being in, there's no eye doctors around. do you do?'cause there's a team of five people here full-time,

Riyad Khamis 28:15

Yeah. Yeah, for sure.

Fred H. Cho 28:17

don't really do much. So I mean. I, whenever they have a doctor coming in, they get super excited, like, oh my

Riyad Khamis 28:24

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 28:24

to finally like, make a big impact, help a lot of people coming

Riyad Khamis 28:28

Right.

Fred H. Cho 28:29

glasses and do good work. They get excited, which is

Riyad Khamis 28:32

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 28:33

opposite from big cities, you

Riyad Khamis 28:35

Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 28:35

here, sometimes we dread like overbooked at busy

Riyad Khamis 28:38

Yeah. Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 28:40

work as long as you need, as fast as you want. It doesn't matter. We will help as many people as we

Riyad Khamis 28:45

Ah, amazing. Okay.

Fred H. Cho 28:46

is very different.

Riyad Khamis 28:47

Okay, so, so definitely like choosing a, a rural area is that, that was, that's interesting and you get to see a lot of areas where you probably wouldn't have ever booked a vacation to or traveled to. So it's probably neat in that way as well. Right. Do you have a, a memorable story from a patient or a patient story from travel optometry.

Fred H. Cho 29:06

The one patient that I keep thinking of, she came in for a routine eye exam. She didn't have any concerns and she just wanted to get new glasses like most of these people. And I saw what looked like hypertensive retinopathy

Riyad Khamis 29:25

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 29:25

eye. So I asked her Hey when's the last time you checked your blood pressure and do you have a family doctor? And she's

Riyad Khamis 29:32

Right.

Fred H. Cho 29:34

I don't even have a family doctor. There's no family doctor in town.

Riyad Khamis 29:38

Right.

Fred H. Cho 29:39

And so I said, okay, why don't you go across the street to shoppers? They have a blood pressure machine. If it's over one 60, over a hundred, okay, may, maybe you should go to er. Maybe you should

Riyad Khamis 29:54

Yes.

Fred H. Cho 29:55

And then I went about my day to finish today. The next day, her daughter came in to say that it was one 90 over 140.

Riyad Khamis 30:08

Oh wow.

Fred H. Cho 30:09

And so they went straight to the ER and she was being treated overnight at the hospital. And so she

Riyad Khamis 30:15

Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 30:16

to thank us for

Riyad Khamis 30:17

Right. Okay. Hmm.

Fred H. Cho 30:21

I think back to that patient a lot because. The impact is so clear.

Riyad Khamis 30:27

Yes.

Fred H. Cho 30:28

her for a routine eye exam, could have gone on to have stroke or

Riyad Khamis 30:33

Yeah. Right.

Fred H. Cho 30:35

So the, I mean, that just makes me again realize how important of a work that we do, and I'm sure. a lot of us optometrists, even in big cities, we see stuff like that. We see ocular emergencies, things that might lead to systemic problems being discovered. So it's just that, you know, I think we lose connection with it sometimes being in like always a go-go mode. But I mean that stuff like that we see here too. So it's just

Riyad Khamis 31:05

right.

Fred H. Cho 31:07

of the importance of the work that we really do. I

Riyad Khamis 31:09

That we do. Yeah.

Fred H. Cho 31:11

cool job.

Riyad Khamis 31:12

Yeah, and it's, it's nice that you got, they came back and, and kind of closed the loop and let you know that as well because I think the, the part of just making an impact for you, like it, it really, it really solidifies that, like, you know, what that was, that was, as you said, you could have prevented a stroke or, or even worse type of thing there as well. So it's, it's a, it's great when you get to hear those stories and they actually have a. An ending where they come and tell you as well. And,

Fred H. Cho 31:39

Yes. Yeah.

Riyad Khamis 31:40

I, that was one theme I've picked up is even I was listening to a surgeon talk and they were talking about burnout, and they were saying like, they save so many lives or help so many people, but sometimes they just never hear from the person again. So in their head it's even though. People know it's obvious. They're helping so many people. Our radiologists are helping so many people. They're just looking at screens, delivering the thing, making the next patient. So they never get that feedback loop of, oh, you actually really helped me because A, B, and C. And that can sometimes lead to the burnout as well. So it's nice to actually hear the follow up and, and how you're helping as well.

Fred H. Cho 32:16

That's, that's so good. I, I wonder why they don't do more of that. Like they should have Pat encourage patients to let their surgeon know

Riyad Khamis 32:23

Yeah, for sure.

Fred H. Cho 32:25

I feel so much better.

Riyad Khamis 32:26

Yeah. Yeah.'cause it, the patients tell everyone else, like, they'll tell their physio, oh, like that surgery was amazing or like that, but, but it sometimes never gets back to the surgeon. They're so busy. Right. So,

Fred H. Cho 32:37

yeah.

Riyad Khamis 32:38

No. So that's, that's really great. I, that really kind of helps us understand travel optometry and, and it really actually for me, clears up a lot of the questions I actually had as well. And I'm sure a lot of people find it valuable. If people are listening or their future optometrist or students and they, they wanna learn more, what's the best place to reach out to you there, Fred?

Fred H. Cho 32:57

I am active on LinkedIn, so you

Riyad Khamis 32:59

Okay.

Fred H. Cho 33:00

me on there. It's Fred h Cho. I also have a. Blog that I write weekly articles on, so that's www.fredcho.com. So yeah, either of those connection points would work.

Riyad Khamis 33:12

Perfect. I know we'll have, we'll put some in, in the show notes, maybe we'll put your information.'cause I know a lot of people will wanna reach out and I know you're great with sharing your time and knowledge as well. And, and I think that that'd be super helpful for people as well. I.

Fred H. Cho 33:25

Yeah. Awesome.