Happy Thanksgiving! I love this time of year!
It’s great that I’ll be graduating in May but that also means this is the last year I get an extended Thanksgiving and Christmas break!! I have the final written portion of my national board exam NEXT TUESDAY so this week my goal is to get as much studying done as possible, while still enjoying the Holiday!
The latest news at SCO is the completion of the Advanced Procedures Theater and Digital Observatory at The Eye Center. Many of you have probably toured to school recently and saw the area under construction. As a tour guide for the school, I received an information sheet about the newest addition to our clinic. There’s no way I could say it better than our own VP for Clinical Programs, Dr. Jim Venable, so I received permission to pass on the info (with photos) directly to you!
Southern College of Optometry
"As THE primary eye health and vision care providers in the US, optometrists (or optometric physicians as they are becoming increasingly known) are on the front lines of patient care. For nearly two decades, optometric physicians have been intimately involved in the peri-operative care of individuals in need of advanced procedures to enhance vision and preserve ocular health. In conjunction with ophthalmic surgeons, optometric physicians provide, and coordinate, the care of individuals with cataracts, glaucoma and dermatological conditions of the eyelids.
The Southern College of Optometry (SCO) has long held a commitment to providing the most technologically advanced training for its students and future generations of health care providers. While peri-operative care has been a part of the curriculum of schools and colleges of optometry for a long time, there haven’t been many changes to the way we train optometric physicians in these types of procedures. The new Advanced Procedures Theater and Digital Observatory in The Eye Center at SCO will put an end to that and change the way primary care eye doctors are trained.” “…the Advanced Procedures Theater and Digital Observatory houses state-of-the-art video and audio capabilities never before assembled for the purpose of educating optometric physicians.” “…we have designed the first-ever patient care and teaching facility that will allow doctors to perform, and observe, advanced clinical procedures while providing students and interns with unparalleled clinical education”, Venable states. Through a collaborative relationship with area ophthalmic surgeons, up to 22 interns can simultaneously experience procedures being performed; and interact with surgeons and technical staff remotely without inconvenience to the patient. In small-group instructional settings, clinical instructors now have the ability to control visualization of any of the instruments in the Advanced Procedures room and two Digital Exam Rooms from one teaching observatory.
The Advanced Procedures Theater houses in-office therapeutic devices (i.e. three ophthalmic lasers and radiofrequency instrumentation designed to treat a number of ophthalmic conditions) that, for the first time, provides doctors-in-training with views of procedures from both the doctor’s and patient’s perspective. Further, it allows us to present clinical encounters in a technological manner most readily embraced by this generation of students”.
The Advanced
Procedures Room / Theater
The Digital Observatory
