After serving Timmins for more than 30 years, Family Eye Care is moving to a new, larger location.
“I knew three years ago that I was kind of bursting at the seams and I was going to need more space in the future. My lease is up in December so I started shopping around a couple of years ago for a location,” says Dr. Karine Briand, optometrist and owner of Family Eye Care.
“I was put in contact with Craig from Krazy Krazy and our timelines matched up. It checked off all the boxes in terms of what I was looking for in a building. I wasn’t looking to move right away, and he wanted time to kind of have a plan for his business to end, so that’s how this building came about,” she says.
Briand joined the practice immediately after graduating from the University of Waterloo in 2010, before buying the business from Dr. Barry Simpson in 2016. Her entire family is in Timmins, which she says definitely influenced her decision to return here to build a career.
“I knew I wanted to purchase my own practice when I graduated. That was my ultimate goal, was ownership,” Briand says.
“It is very hard to be an owner if you don’t have the family support, and that’s more than your husband and your children, it’s family support to raise those children,” she says.
Briand currently practices with two other optometrists, Dr. Valérie Boileau and Dr. Carmen Tse. The new building offers much more space, with six exam lanes compared to their current three, which Briand hopes will allow them to operate more efficiently.
“The ultimate goal is that we’re able to see more patients and shorten up our wait times because I’m fully aware that they are very long, so we’re trying to address that. To be able to see even just five more patients a day is better than nothing. It’s going to be a brand new space so patient-wise, I’m hopeful it will be a wonderful experience,” Briand says.
The new location will also have a dedicated room for counselling and treating patients with dry eyes. It is a welcome addition, Briand says, since there is currently only enough space for the equipment to be used when she is not using her office.
The new location also has free parking and a bus stop located right in front, which Briand says should be more convenient than the paid parking downtown.
Perhaps most importantly, Briand hopes the new space will allow them to bring in more optometrists.
“If we can get a fourth optometrist to join us, it gives more flexibility to the optometrists and shortens up our wait times. Flexibility is important for the optometrists because if I get sick, where do I put these people? When do I see them? If we have a fourth optometrist, we can kind of disperse patients around if there’s a sudden illness or personal emergency that we need to deal with,” Briand says.
“My goal is to onboard a fourth optometrist, but also take on interns. I am an approved clerkship site for the University of Waterloo fourth-year optometry students. I’m hopeful that in the 2023-2024 year, if someone selects our site then they can come and do a placement with us to help in their training,” she says.
“One of the best ways to recruit is if you can get an intern to come and see what it’s like. How does my clinic run? Do you like how my clinic runs? Do you like the community? It’s always easier to recruit that way than to blindly get them to come here.”
Briand has also been in talks with the University of Montreal to become an approved site for them.
Working in rural areas and smaller communities presents unique challenges — and learning opportunities — for those interns. They have to learn a bit of everything, since specialists are often not so easily accessible.
“There’s a lot of interest in rural optometry because you get exposed to a lot, especially as an internship. In Northern Ontario we work our full scope of practice, and you have to do it because then you’re sending patients to Sudbury, you’re sending them to North Bay, and it’s a long drive so if you’re sending them out it better be for a good reason,” she says.
Briand hopes to see eye care in Timmins continue to expand with a new locum clinic that is run by University of Toronto faculty and fifth-year optometry residents. She also hopes that Timmins might one day have a permanent, local ophthalmologist.
Family Eye Care will continue operating out of its current office on Pine St. S. until the new location opens on Nov. 27.
