NorthShore Health Centers is more than an urgent care clinic – under one roof, it offers comprehensive health services: dental, pediatrics, behavioral health, OB/GYN, optometry, and more. It is a constantly growing team of expert providers featuring doctors such as Dr. Alexandra McBurnie, OD, who are passionate about NorthShore’s mission to provide quality care to everyone, regardless of ability to pay.
McBurnie, who joined the NorthShore team about two years ago, long had an interest in a healthcare career. Growing up, she always had a talent for math and science and admired both the breadth of different jobs in the field as well as the idea of helping people. Yet her interest in optometry specifically goes even further back into her early childhood.
“I remember going for my first eye exam, although I never needed glasses or had eye problems,” she said. “Leaving the appointment, I told my mom I was going to be an eye doctor for no other reason than that I loved the visit so much. For whatever reason, it just kind of stuck.”
The seed that visit planted steadily grew, and McBurnie went on to earn her doctorate from the Indiana University School of Optometry. Right after graduating, she moved to Arizona and practiced in a retail setting but didn’t find it as engaging as she had hoped.
“Working in a retail setting, I was struggling a little bit with finding the same passion and purpose that I’d always envisioned for myself,” she said. “I really wanted a change of pace.”
The COVID-19 pandemic changed her and her husband’s circumstances, and they moved back to their home in Northwest Indiana to be closer to family. While looking for a new job, she found NorthShore, whose mission-driven approach to healthcare pulled her in.
“I was always looking for a career where I’d be able to build consistent, quality relationships with my patients,” she said. “In a primary care setting like this, I get to interact with people of all ages and backgrounds. I really love being able to help those people with something as fundamental as their eyesight.”
She quickly fell in love with NorthShore after getting hired and found that her favorite part of the job is meeting the patients she treats. McBurnie prioritizes establishing a relationship built on trust and communication.
“My patients are trusting me with something as important as their sight; they’re choosing to see me,” she said. “The two things that I always come back to are communication and compassion. I think you should always treat others the way you’d want to be treated. I want my patients to feel heard, I’m there to listen to their complaints, their experiences, to listen to them wholly and nonjudgmentally.”
She also loves diving into the details of the job. The eyes are often taken for granted until something goes wrong, and problems with them are often indicators of larger issues.
“I’m a little biased, but eyes really are one of the coolest little organs in our bodies,” she said. “Not only do I get to help people achieve clear vision with glasses or contacts, I really get to play a vital role in a patient’s general health. We can detect things and screen for things like diabetes, heart or thyroid disease, brain tumors, and more during exams. Sometimes, we find things when patients aren’t even symptomatic yet.”
Invigorated by its mission, McBurnie is eager to continue serving patients with NorthShore.
“NorthShore’s been incredible,” she said. “Across these two short years that I’ve been here, I can tell just how important the mission is, and how it’s constantly striving to embody that message for our patients. I’m very lucky that I get to see the positive impact affordable healthcare has on the communities that we serve.”
To learn more about NorthShore Health Centers, visit northshorehealth.org.
