A trip to Panama early in her optometry doctorate program gave Farhana Jui a concrete understanding of how many individuals in the world lack access to critical medical care and how she could help.

She was in her second year at Salus University’s Pennsylvania College of Optometry when she joined a group of students who traveled to La Chorerra. In a country that lacks eye doctors overall, the city is particularly challenged. As a result of their trip, 1,021 people received eye exams, and those who needed them were given prescription and reading glasses. They were also reassured about their eye health.

“It was a privilege to care for patients and earn their trust with something as vital as their vision,” she recently recalled. The “experience affirmed my decision to become an optometrist and taught me how to use my clinical skills effectively to support individuals who lack access to optometric care. It also deepened my understanding of compassion and the importance of providing support to those who truly need it.”

She brings that same commitment to The Floating Hospital as our first optometrist and director of the new Optometry Clinic. She has been in the role since October and has been working diligently ever since with a staff that includes Ashley Gomez, an optometric technician, and Jaqueline Gamez, a medical assistant who is training to conduct patient work-ups under Dr. Jui’s guidance. 

In a conversation at the new clinic, she shared an even earlier appreciation of the importance of eye care through the trials of her own family’s eye issues. “There were a lot of vision problems in my family, as well as myself growing up. So I’ve always been curious about the eyes.”

They moved to the United States when she was three, and she and her little brother would go to New York Eye and Ear together to address their eye issues. She loved the clear vision the glasses they gave her provided, while her brother, who had strabismus (“most people know it as lazy eye”), had surgery at 18 months to straighten his eye. Her whole family would attend his follow-up visits, and listening to the doctors there sparked her curiosity.

In college she found an internship at SUNY’s optometry school in New York City, and she began to learn what caused the vision issues she and her brother had growing up, as well as her father’s macular degeneration. The experience confirmed that it was the career she wanted to pursue. It all “just really interests me. I’m really passionate about the eye.”

That brought her to Salus, where she received extensive training in the management of ocular disease including glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic eye disease. She spent a couple of years practicing in Pennsylvania and then returned to New York to be closer to her family, and that eventually brought her to us.

The clinic is off and running, with regular patients as well as visitors to other departments who pop their heads in to ask how they can make an optometry appointment. “I think once more and more people find out that we have this clinic available for patients, they’re going to be very excited.”

So far, the patients she has seen have “a lot of refractive error. These are conditions that can be corrected with lenses and glasses—so myopia, hyperopia, astigmatism.” Our family medicine providers have told her that they see a lot of diabetic patients. “Diabetics will usually get a routine annual eye exam that’s covered with insurance, because diabetic retinopathy is a leading cause of blindness, and if it’s caught early, it can be treated and prevented before the vision gets worse.”

She has screened for strabismus and amblyopia (two forms of crossed eyes), glaucoma and macular degeneration, all of which tend to be hereditary. Some forms of crossed eyes can be treated with glasses and others have to be referred to ophthalmologists for surgery.

“Optometry, in its simplest form, is primary eye care, similar to how you go to your primary care physician,” she said. If there is a more complex problem detected, they will refer it to a specialist. Before the new clinic, the hospital had referred about 1,700 patients to eye doctors annually. Patients will still need referrals in some cases, but the vast majority will be taken care of by our team with routine screenings and pressure checks, as well as treatment of dry eye, conjunctivitis and vision correction.

“The eye is actually really complicated,” she said. “Even though it’s so small, there are different specialities for different parts of it.” There are specialists for retinas, cataracts, strabismus and other issues. In addition to the vision disorders that inspired her study, some of her other interests include dry eye treatment, myopia control, and cataract management. She is a member of the American Optometric Association and the Pennsylvania Optometric Association, where she practiced previously.

She recommends that everyone wear sunglasses and have an eye exam at least every two years. “A lot of people think if they have 20/20 vision, they’re good and there’s nothing else going on. But that’s not the case.” A full exam includes dilation to see the retina, pressure checks, and other factors. “A lot of chronic conditions in the body manifest in the eyes, like diabetes, hypertension, even some autoimmune conditions like lupus and Sjögren’s syndrome.”

The eye drops that cause the dilation can temporarily blur vision and cause light sensitivity. “But without cutting in, we can actually look directly at your blood cells and blood vessels. The blood vessels in the eye are small, but anything that’s happening there is happening in other parts of your body. That’s why diabetes will show up in your eyes.”

And that’s likely why, she mused, “they say the eyes are the windows to the soul.”