Thank you for your interest in our unique private practice Optometry Residency. Although the thoughts I'd like to share with you relate specifically to vision therapy and rehabilitation, they extend to what your plans are for the rest of your career.
First, why elect to do a Residency? Presumably, you want to broaden your education and gain further clinical experiences in pediatric optometry and vision therapy. Once you've decided that, are you better served by doing a traditional institutional residency (in a College of Optometry Clinic setting), or a private practice site?
You have done at least one extern rotation in a private practice setting in vision therapy, and this experience has to be significantly different if you're going to benefit from the year that you spend with us.
One of the most challenging things about institutional residencies is the difference in patient population from private practice.
With the exception of Medicare, we are not participating providers for any third parties. The patient's relationship is directly with us. While we are strong advocates for patients being reimbursed through carriers, this gives us the freedom to prescribe and implement vision therapy services without compromises. Consistency and continuity is the key to success in VT. Working in concert with our therapists, you will position yourself for success in practice.
Our site emphasizes warmth and compassion, but you will have the opportunity to extend your skills in the application of emerging technology such as visual evoked potentials, sweep VEP for infants, open view auto-refraction for accommodation, corneal topography applied to corneal reshaping therapy for myopia control, and a wide array of computerized vision therapy programs.
I've had the pleasure of collaborating with mentors of mine, as well as with residents who trained under me in institutional settings, on writing papers and presenting posters. You will gain significant experience in researching background material for the cases we'll work on together, as well as in preparing material for publication.
In summary, SCO is the first college of optometry to give you the opportunity to combine crucial private practice management strategies in a didactic environment. We believe you'll find our site to be an exciting center of excellence in this regard, and look forward to you being the prototype of a new breed of pediatric and VT practitioner/educator.