Eva Liang, MD, on gaining perspective and leading with a cool head

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Hi, I'm Eva Liang from Center For Sight in Las Vegas. I'm the founder of the practice and I specialize in complex anterior segment surgery. We have a practice of 12 doctors, which includes ophthalmologists as well as optometrists, and we are a very busy surgical site. So personally, I do about 2,500 cataracts a year and the practice itself does about 5,000 cataracts a year. The practice has been open about 10 years and we manage a large managed-care group or managed-care contract, which I think is what is unique about the practice, because we've been able to fuse managed care with traditional private practice, and it's been a great experience. I’m happy to welcome anyone to come check out Center For Sight in Las Vegas if you're ever out in this direction.

Thank you. Welcome Eva, to our Women in Ophthalmology Healio vlog series on leadership. I'd like to start off by asking you to share one to two examples that have proven to be successful in your professional life, leadership pearls.

So, being in such a busy practice, I feel like I've had to really lead by example. There's nothing in that practice that is below me. I am able to do nearly anything, any job, whether it's something super menial, or say it's something in the OR, right? And they're having a hard time turning the room around. I'm happy to step into any part of that and help people along the way. And I think having that kind of work ethic and being able to pitch in where no job is beneath you and that you're not asking people to do things that you're not willing to do, I think has gone a long way for me, right? I get the respect of my colleagues as well as my coworkers at all levels when you're willing to do that.

Wow, that is so true. And I think leading by example is so important. People are very observant about that. And not enough people really walk the walk and talk the talk, you know, as the saying goes. So, thank you for sharing that pearl.

It keeps you humble which I think is really important, right? With what we do, I mean, granted, if you're in ophthalmology long enough it keeps you humble because there's always that difficult patient or that difficult case that really knocks you down regardless of how well you're doing with most patients. Really, it's the ones that don't do well that you take with you each day.

Absolutely. Eva, you are an amazing surgeon. You have established an empire in Las Vegas, and I am going to come to visit you next time I'm out in that area of the country. Along the way, I am sure you have encountered some hurdles or some challenges, kind of under the umbrella or the overarching topping of leadership. Can you share such a situation with us and how you resolved it or came up with a resolution or a workaround?
So, I'm not going to actually dive into a specific example just because there's been so many issues throughout my 20 plus year career, right? It's hard to kind of narrow one down that I think is politically correct enough to talk about. But I will say that kind of the one thing that has helped me get through most of those is having perspective, right? Because at the time when you're in this conflict you see it from your perspective, and you're really upset and don't understand why somebody else is coming at you from this other direction. And I think that if you stay in that place, you will never resolve the conflict. You always have to back up and take the other perspectives into consideration before you can resolve these types of conflicts. And so, my advice is really just kind of taking perspective, many perspectives. I think one of the very common resources or tools that HR people have is something they call a 360, right? So if there's a problem around something they'll do a 360 analysis. Which is anyone who kind of has a touchpoint with that situation is welcome to give feedback on that particular problem, right? And that 360 I think is really important. It's not something I think we naturally do as physicians. Right? We've been trained to kind of tell people what to do. The patients are coming to us for our professional advice, and we're really just you know, used to our textbook solutions and dictating kind of what happens. And I think staying in that kind of mindset when you are problem solving is tough. I mean, for you personally to solve as well as for those around you. So, I think my advice is gaining perspective, and sometimes if you gain the perspective of people who are just saying things you want to hear, it doesn't help, right? You need different perspectives. You really need to see what the other sides are.

I love that.

Yeah, perspectives. And taking that pause, that moment to evaluate.

Absolutely. Yes, and cooling off, right? Because I think that nothing good happens when you're heated about something. You don't make rational decisions; you just are not going to go to a good place. And sometimes you can't come back from some of those things. It's really important to kind of get perspective, cool off and then approach it with kind of a level head.

I love it, thank you so much for that. And so, I will end our three questions tonight with, what advice would you give to your 20-year younger self?
So, I think I would give myself more slack, right? I think when you're younger and especially going down this path of medicine where we had to do everything a certain way and had to do it so well at such a high level that we came through this really tough as nails and with strong convictions. And if I'm going to do something or if I say I'm going to do something I'm going to do that thing, right? And sometimes we charge in a direction maybe that we shouldn't have, but we're so strong minded, — "nope, this is what I said I was going to do and I'm going to do it," — I think my older more mature self would give myself permission to not feel like I have to ram down that road, right? Or, you know, the things that we are really hard on ourselves about, because we're going to make mistakes. And if I've learned nothing in my time, we can recover from nearly all of our mistakes, right? So, the most important thing when we do make mistakes is to kind of analyze what our role was in it. Because really, we can only be responsible for our role and what could we personally have done in that situation that could have come up with a different result, right? So, I would give myself more slack and allow myself permission to kind of follow my instincts more, right? And you know, learn from my mistakes, constantly learning from my mistakes. And that's something I'm doing still every day.

I love it.

I think we all learn from our mistakes and that's how we grow and that's how we become more resilient and are able to tackle the next problem, and maybe in a wiser and a calmer way.

I have three teenage boys, so there's a lot of not learning from mistakes in this household, so I may be parroting some of my “mom philosophies” at the moment.

And I think, you know, all of us are ultra type A personalities. And so, I feel that we sometimes are hard on ourselves if something's not exactly perfect or even. Even 20/20 sometimes is not enough, right? So, I think that it's nice to just be graceful to ourselves and to be gracious to ourselves. That’s an important lesson for all of us.

Yes, well thank you guys so much for allowing me to share my thoughts and allowing me to reflect on some of these things, right? Because we just get used to kind of doing what we do every day and we don't take a moment to kind of, you know, think about these things, and pass on these important pearls to the next generation. So, thank you.

Yeah, it's true. It's like virtual mentoring.

Yeah, absolutely.

Eva, thank you so much for your time and for sharing your wisdom. We really appreciate it.

Thank you very much for having me. It's a great job you guys are doing.

And we're all coming to Las Vegas.

Yes, please, I welcome you all.

Thank you very much.