About Scott H. Kirk, MD

Scott Kirk was born in 1953, the same year his father, Dr. Harold Q. Kirk, began his ophthalmology practice in Oak Park, Illinois. With a father as a physician, Scott grew up immersed in medicine and in high school began working at West Suburban Hospital as an orderly and then as a scrub technician in the operating room before spending his summers working as an assistant in his father’s practice. Scott attended Oak Park-River Forest High School, where he was a three-year letter winner in gymnastics. In 1971, he entered the University of Illinois where he majored in Zoology. At the University, he was on the Cheerleading squad and was elected captain of the squad his junior year. After completion of three years at the University of Illinois, he applied early to medical school and was accepted to Washington University in St. Louis. In 1978, he received his Doctor of Medicine degree from Washington University and that same year married Jean Saline, his former cheerleading partner. Together they moved to Birmingham, Alabama where Scott served a surgical internship at Carraway Methodist Medical Center. The following year, Scott returned to Washington University to begin his ophthalmology residency. Upon completion of his residency, he returned to Oak Park, Illinois to join his father in private practice. Scott, the oldest, has two brothers and one sister who are all ophthalmologists. Dr. Todd Kirk has his own practice on the south side of Chicago, while his sister Dr. Ann and her husband Doug (also an ophthalmologist) practice in Hammond, Indiana. Dr. Kent, upon completion of his medical training, also joined his father’s practice. In 1986, the Kirk Eye Center, consisting of Dr. Harold, Dr. Scott and Dr. Kent, moved from Oak Park to the present location in River Forest. In addition to a larger clinic, they built their free-standing ambulatory surgical center (ASC), one of the first licensed in the State of Illinois.