Tune In To Eye Health

Dr. Elise Kramer on eye care and music

by Chow Ee-Tan

For someone who has only been in the industry for over a decade, Dr. Elise Kramer — optometrist, contact lens specialist, and musician — has a very impressive resume. If you search her name online, you’ll find that her expertise and versatility go beyond her practice.

After obtaining her doctorate in optometry, Dr. Kramer opened her own practice specializing in contact lens design and fitting, as well as ocular surface diseases, such as dry eye syndrome.

“I had never thought of working in someone else’s practice,” Dr. Kramer shared. “Even when I was still in university, I pictured myself having my own practice and doing it my way. There is nothing more fulfilling than being able to do what you love most, on your own terms. With my own practice, I can decide the type of work and time I spend on my patients, and determine my own schedule.”

Of course, starting her own business was not easy. Dr. Kramer had to do everything from scratch. “I had never taken any business courses, so I had to learn the trade as I went along,” she said. “Yes, it is a lot of hard work if you’re both the doctor and the business owner, but it was a rewarding journey.”

It’s all in the family

“My father is a pediatrician and I have uncles and aunts who are cardiologists, radiologists, and other medical practitioners,” shared Dr. Kramer. “I always knew I wanted to be a physician, but I decided to specialize in the eye when my mother suddenly developed a benign tumor behind one of her eyes in 2007.”

Her mother had double vision and sought every alternative treatment possible to have the tumor removed for fear that she would lose her vision. “Finally, an oncologist suggested to do a series of radiotherapy treatments to shrink rather than remove the tumor,” Dr. Kramer continued.

“From this experience, I became very interested in the eye and decided to take up optometry in university,” she shared.

A passion for eye health

Dr. Kramer graduated in optometry from the University of Montreal in Canada and proceeded to do her doctorate in optometry. She received a grant from the Scholarship Program of the Québec Ministry of Education for short-term university studies outside of Québec. In the summer of her second year, she participated in a humanitarian mission in Laayoune, Morocco, where she helped hundreds of impoverished people by giving them free eye examinations and glasses.

Her residency at the Miami VA Medical Center included training at the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute, the nation’s top eye hospital. After which, Dr. Kramer became a fellow of the Scleral Lens Education Society (SLS), where she now serves as secretary.

“I was privileged to work with a cornea specialist and helped fix contact lenses on patients. I didn’t take up contact lenses for residency because I already had very good training in contact lenses from my university years. Instead, I decided to take up ocular diseases,” Dr. Kramer shared.

She now specializes in ocular surface diseases and contact lenses, in particular designing lenses for a variety of specific conditions. “Montreal had very advanced contact lens programs. I felt quite comfortable fitting and designing contact lenses and wanted to continue to work in that specialty,” she added.

“Most of my patients who have suffered from vision loss are now wearing custom-made contact lenses I have designed using advanced technology,” she said.

Not surprisingly, Dr. Kramer devotes her practice to helping patients, many of whom have keratoconus, refractive surgical complications (such as LASIK), corneal transplant surgery, eye trauma, chronic dry eyes, corneal dystrophies, degenerations, and many others.