Dr. Molly McDonald, OD

Dr. Molly McDonald is a graduate of Lakeville High school,where she was a four-year varsity women’s hockey player. With two girls’ State high school hockey tournament appearances. Dr. Molly was the first recipient of the Herb Brooks Award her senior year. The Herb Brooks Award is presented to the most qualified hockey player in the state tournament who strongly represents the values, characteristics, and traits that defined Herb Brooks. She went on to play Division 1 women’s ice hockey at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York graduating in 2008.

Dr. Molly is a 2012 graduate from The Ohio State University College of Optometry; where she fostered her professional interests in primary eye care with an emphasis on contact lenses, disease detection and treatment, and pre- and post-operative surgical eye care. After graduation she worked at Minnesota Eye Consultants, focusing on cataract, corneal, and glaucoma surgeries. During that time she helped write two chapters in “Limbal Relaxing Incisions: A Practical Guide” with Doctors David R. Hardten and Richard Lindstrom. She also spent time with a local Lasik group determining a patient’s candidacy in preoperative appointments and managing patients after Lasik surgery.

Dr. Molly fostered her development in Vision Therapy by continuing her education through the Optometric Extension Program (OEP). OEP is an international organization dedicated to the advancement of the discipline of optometry through the gathering and dissemination of information on vision and the visual process. It strives to advance human progress on vision, the visual process, and clinical care through research, education, and a dynamic network of professionals.

As President of The Vision Performance Center of Minnesota, she enjoys helping athletes enhance their sports specific visual game. She is a vision consultant to the Seattle Kraken and Nashville Predators. She also enjoys working with children and adults in Vision Therapy for academic and post-concussion treatments. Vision Therapy is a treatment developed by an optometrist, who specialize in how vision is used, known as neuro-behavioral or developmental optometry. This is different from a standard optometrist who identifies and corrects defects in visual acuity (20/20 vision) and evaluates eye health. As a Behavioral/Neuro-behavioral optometrist we can look at eyes that are otherwise healthy, but function poorly due to disruptions in development or brain injury, this is different from Ophthalmology, which is a specialty that focuses on surgery for pathology (disease) of the eye. Because the brain tells the eyes what to do, visual function can be poor even when standard eye tests have found nothing wrong. Vision therapy is a non-invasive and proven effective option in addressing a variety of vision issues, including eye turn, “lazy eye” (strabismus and/or amblyopia), convergence insufficiency, double vision, post-concussion vision syndrome and more. There are numerous benefits to vision therapy, and it can be used to treat a wide variety of disorders and Dr. Molly enjoys seeing a spectrum of patients that suffer from these vision disorders (oepf.org).

Dr. Molly was voted the 2016 “Young OD of the Year” by the Minnesota Optometric Association and Readers Choice “Best Eye Doctor” in Lakeville.

Dr. Molly enjoys working with the community in Lakeville, the community that shaped her career. She loves working alongside her father, who inspired her career as an optometrist and her sister in their second generation family practice. Dr. Molly enjoys being involved again in the Lakeville Hockey program through her daughter and son! Her other hobbies include hanging with her husband and children, staying active outside during any season, as well as reading books for book club!