Dr Schertzer is currently director of the West Coast Glaucoma Centre, in Vancouver, BC and has been on faculty in the Department of Ophthalmology & Visual Sciences at the University of British Columbia since 1999, currently as Associate Clinical Professor in the Division of Glaucoma.
Rob did his undergraduate studies in Physiology at McGill, medical school and internship at Dalhousie, Ophthalmology training at McGill then completed a 16 month glaucoma fellowship under David Campbell’s guidance in 1995 at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. In his fellowship year, he co-wrote two book chapters (in areas in which Dr Campbell had made major contributions to glaucoma over the years) in Ritch, Shields & Krupins’ The Glaucomas (Pigmentary & Ghost Cell Glaucomas), a chapter on gonioplasty for Dan Albert’s Ophthalmic Surgery text, a couple of other articles, helped with the Campbell and Netland Stereo Atlas of Glaucoma, began development of a series of interactive CDs to teach ophthalmic surgery, presented at the AAO then later published by Mosby (as MOM – Multimedia Oculosurgical Modules), and developed an Electronic Medical Record that he presented at ARVO in 1995.
Dr Schertzer’s first academic appointment was at Paul Lichter’s Kellogg Eye Center at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where he was director of the glaucoma service from 1995-1999. He was fortunate to be able to bring his interactive CD development team with him from Dartmouth to further develop the works for publication. These became the number one selling CD title for Mosby at that time. He was also very much involved in helping deploy an enterprise wide electronic health record. In Ann Arbor, he was able to witness first-hand the originally published Mitomycin-C trabeculectomy patients 5 years later and all the problems that resulted from 0.5mg/ml for 5 minutes. He also gained experience with the Ahmed glaucoma valve and has since published two papers on his experience with the device. (One on the success rate of surgical revisions of the S2 implant and, more recently, the largest study by a single surgeon looking at the 2-year success rate of the FP7 implant compared to the S2 implant.)
In search of the great outdoors in a top academic setting, Rob, Laura, Dena and newly born Daniel, moved to Vancouver in 1999 to a full-time position at the Eye Care Centre where he took over Gord Douglas’ practice and started his Masters in Education at UBC. Frustrated with hospital limitations in implementing an electronic medical record, in getting HRT and visual field tests performed for patients in a timely manner (5 month wait at the time), and in accessing these results on-line in the office setting, he founded the West Coast Glaucoma Centre next door to the Eye Care Centre where he has five lanes, 2 visual field machines, an HRT, SLT, YAG and Argon lasers, and a fully integrated electronic medical record. He managed to get a heart attack two months later, his MEd soon afterwards and is doing better than ever now.
Rob has been active in teaching, at the resident, fellow and peer group level. His most recent publications include the longterm Ahmed implant study and a look at whether we have enough glaucoma specialists in Canada to meet the needs of the aging population. He is also finishing off a paper describing changes that he recommended to the residency training committee to meet the needs of the community ophthalmologists rather than those of faculty in ivory towers. Some of the changes were recently implemented in the new curriculum at UBC.
Dr Schertzer enjoys leading talks to peers at grand rounds and small group gatherings in the U.S. and Canada. Most of his talks center around clinical aspects of glaucoma care, particularly related to surgical care, ethical issues, and nerve head imaging. Dr Schertzer has also lectured at national and international glaucoma meetings on the implementation of electronic record systems (including workshops at the American Glaucoma Society annual meetings and the Canadian Annual Glaucoma meeting).
Contacting Dr. Schertzer:
email: iguy@iguy.org