This podcast was produced in partnership with Transitions Optical.

“We live in a world now where it’s all a big melting pot,” Dr. Darryl Glover states at the beginning of this podcast. “It’s all different flavors; all different backgrounds. And as eye care professionals we have to know how to serve these patients.” Joining us on this discussion are two eyecare professionals that are embracing this mindset, Dr. Diana Canto-Sims and optometry student Sydney Madrigal. 

Sydney Madrigal is a Cuban-American fourth year optometry student at the University of Alabama at Birmingham School of Optometry. Growing up in South Florida, she shares that entering optometry school in Alabama was “a bit of a culture shock.” In Florida her life was immersed in the Hispanic culture of her upbringing, but in Alabama she’s felt the need to explain herself and her cultural background more so than she ever has before. It’s helped her grow as both a doctor in training and a person to recognize the importance of effective communication with people that don’t share a common cultural identity. 

Sydney Madrigal, Student Optometrist

Dr. Diana Canto-Sims was born in Chicago to Mexican and Puerto Rican parents, but she moved when she was ten years old to Puerto Rico. She lived there for 15 years, attending optometry school at the Inter American University of Puerto Rico School of Optometry. Upon graduating she moved back to Chicago with her optometrist husband and opened Buena Vista Optical to serve the Hispanic community in her city. Dr. Canto-Sims shares that her grandfather never had an eye exam until he was late in life and having trouble with vision. They got the devastating news that his vision was permanently lost from macular degeneration, but if he had been getting regular eyecare and the condition had been detected earlier, there might have been a way of preventing this situation. Her father was also born with strabismus and a significantly amblyopic eye, and had also never been treated in an eye doctor’s office. “For me, I couldn’t believe that in my family, no one ever went to the eye doctor… I kept thinking, if only we had known for my grandfather, for my father.  I remember going to the eye doctor and translating for my parents and they were so confused about what was going on. So for me this is really heart felt because now there is a lot of diversity; there are eye doctors that can do an eye exam in Spanish – but when I was growing up, that didn’t exist.” 

Dr. Diana Canto-Sims, Optometrist & Eyewear Designer

It’s very important to be able to serve members of your community in the language that they speak, but Dr. Canto-Sims and Madrigal both agree that even if you are struggling communicating in Spanish, just trying to communicate shows the patient that you care. “Patients don’t care what you know until they know that you care,” Dr. Canto-Sims shares. Even if you don’t have perfect language skills, it’s important to show patients that you care enough to try. 

What are some of the most common misperceptions that Hispanic communities have about eyecare?

* Knowing the difference between optometrist, ophthalmologists, and opticians can be a point of confusion. Madrigal encourages doctors to take the time to explain that as optometrists you aren’t just getting them a prescription, but you are also doing a comprehensive ocular health exam to detect sun damage, diabetes, and high blood pressure issues affecting the eye.* The need for UV protection for the eyes is also poorly understood in the Hispanic community. Dr.