Veterans Day is a special day for Rachel Bishop, M.D., M.P.H. A veteran herself, it’s one of the three days each year, along with Memorial Day and Independence Day, when she’ll hang an American flag outside her home. She reflects on her time in the military fondly as, in a way, it led her to where she is today: Wilmer Eye Institute, Johns Hopkins Medicine, where she is an assistant professor of ophthalmology and medical director of its Frederick clinic.

Bishop’s interest in the military started at a young age. As a child, her father was a foreign service officer for the U.S. Department of State, which resulted in her having many interactions with Marines. It’s how she developed a foundation of great respect for the military, she says. After completing high school, she accepted a four-year Army ROTC scholarship to attend Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She became more familiar with what the Army does, and came to appreciate what it stands for.

Once she graduated college, Bishop began her commitment to the Army and was assigned to be an ambulance platoon leader and, later, executive officer for a medical company in the Army’s 2nd Infantry Division in South Korea. Her Army career continued in San Francisco, where she was a hospital administrator at Letterman Army Medical Center.

The assignments were Bishop’s first exposures to medicine, and gave her the intellectual stimulation she was looking for in a career. She says she enjoyed her interactions with doctors at both locations, and the experiences inspired her to attend medical school. “Medicine found me kind of late, relatively speaking, but ended up being a very good fit for me,” she says.

Bishop discovered her fondness for ophthalmology while attending medical school at the University of Pennsylvania. It was a required rotation in the specialty that got her hooked. She says she liked how hands-on ophthalmology is and the ability to see the pathology in the eye. She also got satisfaction from the immediate impact a procedure such as cataract surgery can bring to a patient.

Once she completed her residency training in the Army, Bishop’s first staff Army job, in 2003, was as chief of ophthalmology and refractive surgery at the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood, Texas. There, she was responsible for treating active-duty military and retirees as well as their families. The scope of practice was broad, and any given day in the operating room could include cataract, glaucoma, strabismus and oculoplastic surgery.

The hospital was also a high-volume refractive surgery center, as at the time, the Army was deploying many soldiers to Iraq and Afghanistan. The best qualified soldier, Bishop says, is one who is emmetropic, or who doesn’t need glasses to see clearly, and is wearing protective eyewear that can be easily replaced if damaged. “For people who can’t see without their glasses, if you put them in battle and their glasses get fogged or broken, and they don’t have an immediate replacement, they’re like a lame duck,” she says. “They can’t see the fire fight or run their operations.”

Bishop says she enjoyed the camaraderie that came with being part of a team that shared the same goal — preparing the best-qualified soldier. “The military community is a culture I respect,” she says. “When you’re on a military base, there is something drawing you together, a common purpose. Even if you don’t know a person you run into, you have something in common.”

Trading Suits

In 2006, Bishop continued her uniformed services career and traded in her Army greens for the khakis of the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps. She joined the National Eye Institute, where as chief of its consult service, she cared for people participating in clinical trials of the National Institutes of Health. In this role, she monitored medication and treatment side effects, managed eye conditions related to NIH protocols, and provided comprehensive eye care for adults and children treated at NIH.

Bishop was also a member of the USPHS’s rapid deployment force, whose mission is to deploy to sites of natural disasters to provide supportive medical care. She rose to the position of deputy commander of the 180-person team comprised of medical, nursing, pharmacy and logistics units. Her time in the USPHS included five deployments. She provided medical support for victims of Hurricane Isaac in Louisiana and Hurricane Matthew in Alabama, eye care and glasses to residents of the Rosebud Sioux Tribe in South Dakota and residents of rural villages along the Amazon River in Peru, and medical support to the 2013 inauguration of President Barack Obama.

Bishop retired from public service as a Navy captain in 2019 and joined Wilmer earlier this year.

Moving On to Wilmer

In the military, there’s a sense of discipline and respect for the order of things, and when one learns it, it becomes part of their fabric, Bishop says. She continues to carry that sense of discipline, responsibility and integrity today, and draws on her experiences in the military while working at Wilmer.

Bishop continues to see parallels in her Army and Wilmer careers. She felt a sense of community while in the military and feels a similar sense of community at Wilmer’s Frederick clinic. She sees people who she considers her extended family — fellow troops in the Army, her patients at Wilmer — and wants to put them in the best position possible.

When Bishop sees a patient, she wants to connect with them and make sure they understand what is going on with their health. “That’s how my whole career has been, and I carry that, still,” she says. “When a patient comes in, they may be a total stranger, but they don’t really feel that way. Our job is to do whatever is very best for that patient, and I’ve never lost that purpose.”

In addition to seeing patients, she is bringing leadership coaching to Wilmer faculty who are interested in expanding their skills. She thinks back to early in her military career as a platoon leader mentoring younger troops, and can connect how those experiences apply coaching at Wilmer. “You want to see them succeed and achieve their potential and grow,” she says. “That absolutely started in the Army.”