P. Dee Stephenson, MD, on creative ways to combine work, motherhood

Editor's note: This is an automatically generated transcript of Season 2, episode 14 of the Healio/WIO Our View Video Blog series, which has been slightly edited for clarity. Please notify editor@healio.com if there are concerns regarding accuracy of the transcription.

Hi, everyone. I'd like to welcome you to our Women in Ophthalmology vlog, and I'd like to especially welcome Dr. Stephenson, who's with us today. Thank you for being here.

Thank you.

Can you share with our viewers about your practice?

 Sure. I'm Dee Stephenson, and I live in Venice, Florida, and practice here. I have for 34 years, and I have a boutique practice. I'm a cataract refractive surgeon. Lots of dry eye, I do MIGS, and some cornea and external disease, but no corneal surgery. I have a very unique setting here because it's a small town; it's got a small-town feel, but it's a big town in the fact that we have a lot of snowbirds, and the population is changing quite a bit. So, it used to be we had 6 months of very busy, now we have 12 months of very busy. So, it's been a wonderful transition over the years to become a boutique practice, and about 92% of my patients are premium patients. So, it's about the experience from beginning to end: how they are treated in my office to how their outcomes are for their cataract surgery. So, it's something I've spent a lot of hard time and energy on, and it's taken me a long time to get it how I want it, and it's been a wonderful journey. But there's a lot of things that go on behind the scenes that are certainly part of that.

So, perhaps you can share. I know you do have a lot of work, but how do you manage to juggle everything with it? Your family, your surgery and all your other commitments?

Sure. Well, I have a grown daughter, and she will be 29 in July, and I have a 1-year-old grandson, who was one last Wednesday. And I have a 93-year-old mother who lives in town. You know, my daughter, son-in-law and grandson live about 40 minutes away. And right now, it's been a really easy thing to juggle because I'm divorced, so I don't have anyone that depends on me to come home at a certain time, so my hours are kind of my own. However, I spend as much time as I can, obviously, with my mom, I usually see her one day a week and then always on the weekend, always on Sunday for family time. And I usually see my daughter and son-in-law, at least my daughter, and grandson now, at least two times a week. And I do. I teach. I'm a volunteer associate professor at USF in Tampa. I do two mentorship programs, you know, through Bausch + Lomb and through CEDARS/ASPENS. And I do a lot of traveling. In fact, I just got back from Panama with Elios to incorporate a new glaucoma procedure that's not approved in the US, and so I did three surgeries when I was there with 12 other doctors, so it was quite wonderful. And I'm also a member of the Lions Club, at which I do community service, and I do an eye clinic about four times a year, but I see all kind of Lions patients, and I support the Little Theater, and I support the Lions Club, and some other important things in our community. But today it's not as hard for me as it was when I once started, when I had a young child, and that was a little harder to do. And in that vein, at the time when my daughter was little, I was divorced when I was little, but her father was involved in her life, and I had a person that watched her after school. She went to afterschool care and daycare, and I brought her to my office every single day after school, so she came to my office every day about, depending on what day of the week it was, either 12:30 when she got off early or she came to my office at 3:00. And I had a person in my office that would go pick her up at school and bring her. So, I didn't miss any time with her during the day. When she was really little, I breastfed her until she was a year, and my husband would bring her to the office. So, it was easy to kind of do that. But at that time also, I was traveling to Miami once a month because I was the president of the Miami Eye Bank and the Lions Eye Bank. And so, I had to go there once a month. So, it's a lot to juggle, but when you're young and when you're determined with a business and stuff, it's not a burden of any choice or any size. I mean, you know, you just kind of do what you have to do. We're women. I mean, we all do what we have to do, whether we have children or not. We have commitments to other people. We have commitments to our family, whether it's being a mom or a daughter. And I have a commitment to my mother, and she moved here about 13 years ago, and I want to spend time with her. And I have a handful of really great girlfriends, and I make sure I have time to be with them. I visited Cynthia and Denise; We met in New York and had a wonderful time in January. I see Denise again in January and then I see her in August. And, you know, we take time at meetings to have some time with our friends, or we travel to India, and we spend time with our friends during a meeting. So, it's one of those things that just kind of works itself out. I don't have really any great words of wisdom about a child other than to just kind of blend your child into your practice. And my patients loved that. I had a picture of her every month. I would put up a new photograph, so they followed her as she grew up. And she was also in the office up until, well, through high school until she didn't want to be around me, but she would come every day. And now I do the same thing. I have pictures of my grandson up, and I've changed them monthly. So, patients want to be involved, especially if you're in a setting where you know your patients, and my practice is by word of mouth. So having your child involved in your business is not a bad thing as long as it doesn't take away anything from your patient. And there were patients that would not want her in the room, and she would bring the chart in, walk the patient to the room, and then she would leave. And, you know, she loved acting as if she was really helping. And actually, she was, because a lot of these folks miss their grandchildren, or miss their children for that matter, so.

I love that pearl, actually: that you can create that life that you want. Most of us don't think that you would be able to bring your child to work, but you created that. And, you know, even 20 years ago, you created that. And we had Dr. Wong on here earlier, and she's done that with her children. So, I think that's really awesome for our viewers to hear that, if you want it, you can create it. And so, thank you. My question is going to take a little bit of a turn. Do you have a quote, or a saying, or a mantra that kind of gets you through a day?

Well, always in the morning, I always try to say just, your higher power or whatever you want, to just help me make it through today and do the best I can for patients. And I'll always say that before I do surgery. It's just something that, you know, you just kind of put your best foot forward. I think, as women, we have to hide our feelings of being hurt or we have to hide our feelings of being stepped upon or disrespected or whatever. And a lot of times you just smash those down and you pull up what's good. So, you know, patients need a positive role model as a doctor. So, if you act interested, you can get that response from them. And so, I think just really waking up in the morning and saying, “Please God, help me get through the day in the best way I can to serve my patients in the areas that they need to be served in.” And that served me well. And my other mantra for surgery would be, the day I am not nervous about doing surgery is the day I need to retire. And that was given to me by my mentor, Dr. John Wells. And he said, "As long as you're nervous, keep doing it. The day you're not, give it up."

Wow, that's an interesting pearl, Dee. I really like that. And I like how you start your day on a positive note, you know to get the day going. And then sometimes, when you set the day like that, it truly does become a positive day. Well, with that, my question to you is do you have any real-world pearls that you can share with our audience about things that help you reset? What do you do to take care of you so that you are in the best shape possible emotionally, physically, any which way, to help continue do all that you're juggling and doing?

Well, it's a wonderful thing to ask because I don't always have the answer for that. As many of you know, I'm physically handicapped, but it's not deterred me from being a good surgeon. I just have bad legs, if you will. My hands are still good. So, you know, eating well and sleeping well are always great things, you know? During COVID, I had anxiety so I took medication, and I don't think people should be ashamed of that. And if you suffer from depression, which I do but I haven't in a long time, take that medication if you need it. I love to cook and I love to eat, but I love to cook, so I always look for new recipes, and I have a handful of friends that I enjoy going out to dinner with, and I try to do that at least once every other week. Not every week, but once every other week. The weekdays are hard for me because I have a busy schedule and I'm tired. So on the weekends I have to kind of recharge my battery. But I do some exercise, I do some rowing, and I need to start swimming. Now that the weather's beautiful, I can get back in the pool. But I also actually like to read things that aren't about ophthalmology. So if I can pick up a good book on a rainy afternoon in Florida, which there are many on the weekend, it kind of just resets it. I journal a little bit, so I always like to journal a little bit just for my anxiety, sometimes it really helps, or just to review your week and what you could have done better. And then I also have a wonderful mother who is always an inspiration because she finds something wonderful in every day and in every person. So, hanging out with my 93-year-old mother is like such a pleasure. A wonderful sense of humor is something she's taught me, and I do try to have a sense of humor and laugh. And I guess maybe the biggest and most important thing for me is laughter. If I can laugh, I know that I'm okay, and laugh at myself as well as just, you know, that belly laugh that you can get when you are just laughing about an experience or reminiscing with girlfriends or friends about something that you've done together. So, I think laughter is probably the most important thing in my world.

Dee, thank you so much. I agree with so many of the things you shared and such personal things, so thank you so much. It was great having you on the program. What an honor.

Yeah, thank you so much for sharing so much of your life experience with us all. It's very inspirational. Thank you.

Thank you, all. And I couldn't have picked three nicer ladies, so thank you so much.