Choosing Home with Tiffany Chan, OD
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What inspired Tiffany Chan to pursue a career in optometry?
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I'm Emily Silverman, and this is The Nocturnists. Today's guest is optometrist Tiffany Chan, who performed on stage at a live storytelling event produced by Dr. Rebecca George at the Sierra Valley Health Center in Nevada City, California in 2025, an event that was made possible with support from the California Healthcare Foundation. Tiffany grew up in the gold rush town of Grass Valley, built a career in elite academic medicine at Johns Hopkins, and ultimately found her way back home after her mother's sudden illness transformed her sense of place and purpose. In my conversation with Tiffany, we talk about the tension between working at an elite academic medical center and the pull of home. how her mother's medical crises reshaped her understanding of healing, the intimacy and continuity of small-town, relationship-driven medicine, and carrying forward her family's and community's cultural and caregiving legacies.
I hope you enjoy Tiffany as much as I did, but first, take a listen to her story, performed live on stage in Nevada City.
Mrs. Parker, my high school English teacher, asked, why do you want to become a doctor?
How did Tiffany’s residency and fellowship choices shape her professional path?
Because I want to help people, I say cheerfully. And she responds, you know, there's a lot of ways to help people besides becoming a doctor. So that certainly surprised me,
kind of took me
back. But now, many years later, I finally see her message as words of encouragement. So I end up following my parents' footsteps, especially my dad. We were both born and raised in Grass Valley, so we both went to Hennessy. We went to Nevada Union High School, undergrad at UC Davis, and optometry school at UC Berkeley. And I was planning on joining the family practice when I graduated, but I decided to do a residency instead at a veteran's hospital in New York. It was a phenomenal program. We got to work at the Center of Balance, collaborate with audiology and physical med and rehab, and helping those veterans who had balance issues, some from blast injuries, some age-related. And as amazing as the program was, the accommodations were the exact opposite.
For $200 a month, I got to stay on the VA campus, and it was like an abandoned insane asylum. The lights were flickering. It had probably last been renovated in the 70s, and there were a whole list of things that were contraband. So we weren't allowed to have any of the normal things, drugs, alcohol, tobacco, but they also listed things like cooking devices and babies. So I was planning on going home after that, but then I was accepted into a competitive fellowship at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore in low vision rehabilitation. And then I was definitely going to go home after that, but Johns Hopkins opened up a faculty position, and I thought, how could I turn this down? So fast forward, I'm 29 years old, sitting in my one bedroom apartment in Baltimore, and it feels more empty than usual.
It's late. I'm exhausted. It's been another 14-hour workday in the clinic, which is pretty much the norm. I'm sitting on my couch. I have my reheated bowl of leftover pasta, and it's warm in my hands even through the potholder. And I'm just staring at my cell phone.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What inspired Tiffany Chan to pursue a career in optometry?
0:00–2:16
2
How did Tiffany’s residency and fellowship choices shape her professional path?
2:16–5:15
3
What was the impact of her mother’s brain bleed on Tiffany’s life and career decisions?
5:15–6:34
4
How did the emergency surgery and ICU experience affect Tiffany’s perspective on healing?
6:34–7:57
5
What challenges did Tiffany face when transitioning back to the family practice in Grass Valley?
7:57–8:44
6
How does the small‑town, relationship‑driven model of care differ from academic medicine?
8:44–10:20
7
What lessons does Tiffany share about balancing prestige, personal values, and community?
10:20–11:51
8
What advice does Tiffany give to clinicians facing tough career‑life crossroads?
11:51–1:13:56