News

Dunderland asked to stay on as the NDOA’s president

By Scott Wagar

11/04/2014

Dr. Paul Dunderland has been named the president of the North Dakota Optometric Association (NDOA) for the second consecutive year and will continue his diligent work with the organization to improve the lives of optometrists and the patients they care for in their clinics.

“My goal as the president is to bring the North Dakota Optometric Association’s members together to foster good working relationships amongst all the doctors in the state; to work on policies that will improve the practice of optometry and to provide continuous education for optometrists three times a year so doctors can maintain their required continued education courses,” Dunderland said.

“We, as an organization, also try to promote good vision amongst the citizens of our state and promoting children’s vision and the importance of that.”

One of the children’s programs is InfantSEE, a program that calls for children to have their first eye examination at six months of age to diagnose such eye complications as excessive or unequal amounts of nearsightedness, farsightedness, or astigmatism, eye movement ability and eye health problems.

Another children’s program under Dunderland’s leadership calls for children starting their kindergarten year to have an eye examine.

“We feel that ideally every child should have an examination before or during their year of kindergarten,” Dunderland said.

“Around 80 percent of learning comes from vision. So, it is extremely important that a child’s vision is working properly and efficiently to provide the setting for adequate learning in school.
Dunderland added that individuals would be surprised in the number of kids who do not have their eyes regularly examined. He pointed out that he recently diagnosed a kindergarten student who had Amblyopia, or, what is commonly called lazy eye, which was missed in a school screening.  

“Screenings are okay,” Dunderland said. But, we still recommend a full examination to pick up on some of these serious eye problems.”

As the president of the NDOA, Dunderland also cares for a number of other items that concerns the organization.

“As an organization, we work on advocacy for optometry and vision care in general, legislative work to allow doctors to practice at a higher scope of practice, or to practice at their highest level of training,” Dunderland said. “We are a legislative profession, too, so we have to do everything through the legislature to achieve approval for different practices and procedures.

“The NDOA also monitors legislative work that concerns optometry in the state,” Dunderland said.

Dunderland has been a member of the NDOA since 1983 and a member of the American Optometric Association (AOA) since his first year in optometry school.

Presently, North Dakota has 150 optometrists in the state with 120 of them as NDOA members.

Dunderland was named president of the NDOA in 2013 and has utilized his time in the association in improving children’s vision with developing education on the issues, along with marketing and promoting parents to have their children’s eyes examined.

He has lobbied hard for the association in legislation over the concern of third party insurance plans which has potential to affect the optometry field in how the doctors are reimbursed.

Dunderland has also utilized his time to build a better relationship between the NDOA and insurance companies so optometrist can provide better clinical services to their patients.

With the challenging agenda Dunderland and his officers have taken upon themselves, which is time consuming, it was decided by the NDOA members to keep the 2013 leadership of the association in place for 2014 so they could continue the positive work they are performing.    

“A few things we wanted to complete, we were not able to finish in our first year,” Dunderland said. “So, it was agreed to leave us in our positions to complete the work we are doing in the state.”

Outside of state work, Dunderland as the NDOA president attends the national meetings of the American Optometric Association and sits on the AOA’s House of Delegates where he votes upon a number of measures and bills before the house.

Dunderland stated that he has enjoyed his time as the NDOA’s president.

“I’ve enjoyed it,” he said. “It has been interesting and I have come to appreciate what we call organized optometry.”

Dunderland is a 1975 graduate of Bottineau High School. He earned his bachelor of science’s degree in visual science and his OD from Pacific University in Forest Grove, Ore.