While attending University of Tennessee, Johnston worked as a volunteer leader with Young Life, a youth ministry for middle and high school students. Still unsure of his professional trajectory after graduating UT with a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature, he joined Young Life as a staff member and lived for a couple years in Nashville. It was during that time that he really started thinking about what he wanted out of a career. A friend and key mentor suggested medicine, and Johnston was instantly intrigued. After thinking extensively about it, conducting quite a bit of research, and talking to a lot of people on the matter, he decided to go for it. The first step was going back to school to complete two years of prerequisites. Johnston started testing the waters in different areas of medicine to see where he might best fit. Thanks to a childhood friend (who happens to be our own Eric Sollenberger, M.D.), he was able to get his first taste of the exciting world of Ophthalmology.

“Since I didn’t really have any exposure early on, I just tried to see if there was a way that I could get involved in a clinic or a hospital,” Dr. Johnston said. “I talked to Eric and was able to come and work at Drs. Campbell, Cunningham, Taylor & Haun for a couple of months on Dr. Cunningham’s team. That wasn’t necessarily me saying I wanted to do Ophthalmology at the time. It was more about me needing exposure to medicine. I needed to see if I liked this, and I loved it. That’s when I decided to chase it full on.”

“There were just some really neat formative experiences along the way, so many little moments that spurred me on,” he said. “I kind of thought about it as setting up some hurdles. Once you clear the first hurdle, you’re feeling good and thinking maybe you can clear the second one. So I went and did this thing in South Africa and it was an awesome experience…so was working with Dr. Cunningham in our eye clinic, and so on and so forth. It really was just kind of a perpetual process of one thing leading to the next and giving me more of a desire to keep going.”

He certainly had all the motivation he needed, which carried him through medical school at UT Health Science Center in Memphis followed by an internship at UT Hospital in Knoxville and back to Memphis to complete his residency at the Hamilton Eye Institute.

Though he admits it’s been a rather long journey of discovery that eventually led him to Ophthalmology, Dr. Johnston realizes that things just seemed to click along the way and solidify that it is indeed the field he’s meant to be in.

“It’s hard to beat,” he said. “Nothing came close to it really. I just realized Ophthalmology was the best fit for me.”

In Johnston’s words, the practice is the “total package,” and he couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.

“There’s not much more that you could want,” he said. “We’ve got our own surgery center, our own LASIK® center, a medical retina specialist, two cornea specialists, and so much more. There is such camaraderie between the doctors. It really is everything that you could want in a practice.”

Dr. Johnston and his wife Jessica have four young children, so spare time can be hard to come by. But when time allows, he loves to be outside gardening, landscaping, cheering on the Vols, or hiking in the East Tennessee mountains.

To schedule an appointment with Dr. Johnston or any of our physicians, call us at (865) 584-0905.