Skills learned in first semester?

[SarahNC]

I was curious as to what clinical skills other schools taught in their first semester. I'm at PCO and feel we should have learned more. We spent a ton of time on VA's and automated FDT, NCT, refractions and some time on color/stereopsis, pursuits, and keratometry. I am surprised and kind of disappointed we didn't start learning to refract yet. Our practicals this semester are only for automated equipment and for visual acuities.

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[Dwight Schrute]

NOVA's 1st semester clinical skills include:
-Preliminary tests like case history, VA, color vision, stereopsis, EOM
-Keratometry
-Retinoscopy
-Monocular refraction
-Basic slit lamp (i.e lids/lashes/margin, conjunctiva, cornea, iris)

 

[alferec]

NOVA's 1st semester clinical skills include:
-Preliminary tests like case history, VA, color vision, stereopsis, EOM
-Keratometry
-Retinoscopy
-Monocular refraction
-Basic slit lamp (i.e lids/lashes/margin, conjunctiva, cornea, iris)

You guys learn these skills really early!!! This is how SCCO goes as far as the skills you mentioned...

-Preliminary tests like case history, VA, color vision, stereopsis, EOM = All throughout 1st year, mostly in the Winter and Spring
-Keratometry = Spring of 1st yr
-Retinoscopy = Spring of 1st yr
-Monocular refraction = Spring of 1st yr
-Basic slit lamp (i.e lids/lashes/margin, conjunctiva, cornea, iris) = Winter of 2nd yr

We barely learned any skills in the first quarter actually - but then when we do learn the skills, we hit them really hard and they drill us like crazy with multiple proficiency exams...!

 

[KHE]

I was curious as to what clinical skills other schools taught in their first semester. I'm at PCO and feel we should have learned more. We spent a ton of time on VA's and automated FDT, NCT, refractions and some time on color/stereopsis, pursuits, and keratometry. I am surprised and kind of disappointed we didn't start learning to refract yet. Our practicals this semester are only for automated equipment and for visual acuities.

Sarah, don't worry about it. You're going to be refracting for the next 50 years. You'll have plenty of time to get to that.

 

[SarahNC]

Sarah, don't worry about it. You're going to be refracting for the next 50 years. You'll have plenty of time to get to that.

Haha, I know! But, spending a whole semester on "tech" things seemed kind of weird to me. I don't know, I just expected more than that. Oh well.

 

[JMU07]

NOVA's 1st semester clinical skills include:
-Preliminary tests like case history, VA, color vision, stereopsis, EOM
-Keratometry
-Retinoscopy
-Monocular refraction
-Basic slit lamp (i.e lids/lashes/margin, conjunctiva, cornea, iris)

At SCO we've done all of these except slit lamp and case history. No automated tests. The refraction we've done is the entire manifest technique (sphere and cyl, bino balance). We've also done cover tests, pupil testing, amp/NPC (which I guess are preliminary tests?). This week we did phoria testing (using the Risley prisms on the phoropter) and next week we're doing direct ophthalmoscopy.

 

[ODduck]

At Pacific, we learn case history+entrance skills (cover test, EOM's, confrontational fields, VA's, etc.) in the first semester of 1st year. Then learn slit lamp, retinoscopy, ophthalmoscopy, lensometry in the second semester of 1st year.

2nd year is devoted to learning the entire refraction sequence and visual analysis (PRA, NRA, phorias, etc.) in the 1st semester and high plus, goldman tonometry, and a few other procedures in the 2nd semester.

Don't be too concerned about learning how to refract, to be honest with you I think that entrance skills are harder to learn/perform than subjective refraction. In some ways, case history is harder than subjective refraction. Slit lamp, retinoscopy, and ophthalmoscopy are immensely more difficult to learn than subjective refraction.

Just my opinions though...