Dr. Anna Sets Sights on Rural Communities

Dr. Anna Anderson, O.D., is fresh out of optometry school and ready to serve West Tennessee.

To Dr. Anderson, providing eye care in rural communities is essential. Optometrists are saturated in bigger cities, and patients in smaller towns and communities are left to drive long distances for their annual eye exams. The distance is sometimes a barrier to care, and some patients might skip their annual exams because of the hassle.

Dr. Anderson said she wants to help erase those barriers. She emphasized the need for annual exams.

“Some patients think there’s nothing wrong with their eyes because they can see well. That’s not necessarily true,” she said. Optometrists can spot tumors, diabetes, high blood pressure, early stroke symptoms, and more from annual dilation.

When she receives her license to practice, Dr. Anderson will work with Acuity Eyecare Group, based mainly in Dover at the Dover Eye Clinic and sometimes in Paris at the Harrison Eye Clinic.

Dr. Anderson, the daughter of Mark and Malissa Anderson, graduated from McKenzie High School in 2015. She graduated from the University of Tennessee at Martin in December 2018 with a degree in organismal biology before moving to Memphis to attend the Southern College of Optometry. She graduated from the Southern College of Optometry with Magna Cum Laude and received a Doctor of Optometry in May 2023, and she passed her board exams this summer.

While she waits to receive her license, Dr. Anderson works as a tech for Dr. Frances Bynum, O.D., at Northwest Tennessee Eye Clinic in Martin.

But her journey to practicing optometry was not always so linear.

Dr. Anderson always knew she wanted to work in the medical field. For a while, she thought she would follow in her mom’s footsteps and become a speech pathologist. She changed her mind after job shadowing her mom, realizing it did not feel right.

Dr. Anderson went to Smith & Smith Optometry for her annual eye exam the summer before her senior year of high school, and she began reading posters around the waiting room and exam rooms. She had never thought about pursuing optometry before, and she wanted to learn more. She asked Dr. Mark Smith all of her questions during her eye exam.

“So many questions that Dr. Mark was like, ‘Come back and shadow with me,’” said Dr. Anderson. “You know, ‘Come back when I can actually answer your questions a little bit better.’”

She job shadowed Dr. Smith one day during the spring of her senior year. That day, her professional life changed. She watched as a little girl received her first pair of glasses and saw her mom clearly for the first time. She saw a patient whose life was saved by optometry when Dr. Smith found a tumor in the back of the patient’s eye.

These patients’ stories inspired Dr. Anderson to pursue optometry, but even more elements have helped her stay committed to the profession.

“It’s one of your vital senses,” Dr. Anderson said. “The way you take in a space, the way you navigate the world. And the world is just too beautiful a place for you to not have your vision, truly...The patients, they have a passion for their vision, too. Nobody wants to be blind. Nobody wants to lose any vision. So I’m going to try my best to make sure that doesn’t happen or at least slow it down if it is going to happen.”

As someone who has worn glasses since she was 10 years old and began wearing contacts at 12 years old, Anderson knows how to relate to the patients in the exam rooms. But it goes deeper than that. As a teenager, Dr. Anderson discovered she had an autoimmune disease. She went from doctor to doctor, trying to find someone who would listen and find answers.

“I know how frustrating it is to not know what’s going on with you and to have doctors tell you that you’re normal. Your tests came back normal, and that’s all they can tell you. I don’t want to do that,” said Dr. Anderson. She wants to be an advocate for her patients, prioritizing listening to their ailments, performing more in-depth exams, or referring them to a primary care doctor if their tests come back normal.

During her fourth year at the Southern College of Optometry, she did rotations and externships in West Tennessee. During her first rotation, she worked with the Jackson VA Clinic. During her second rotation, she worked with Dr. Bynum at Northwest Tennessee Eye Clinic in Martin and performed exams on patients of all ages. For her third rotation, she returned to the college and rotated through working at the disease clinic, the contact lens clinic, the surgery clinic, vision therapy, and low vision rehab.

Dr. Anderson said she is passionate about vision therapy — teaching children or reminding elderly patients, typically stroke victims, how to use their eyes to focus on different targets. She has a long-term goal to introduce a vision therapist to her practice.

Dr. Anderson will provide general eye care services four days a week at the Dover Eye Clinic and one day a week at Harrison Eye Clinic in Paris. She will provide annual eye exams and contact lens exams, give patients glasses and contact lens prescriptions, provide medical and accident care, and refer patients for cataract surgery.