Well I'm back at it. I survived my first week as an official 3rd year. It was time to put all my knowledge and practice to use with real patients. Monday I was assigned to Adult Primary Care. This is where I was able to see patients and perform the exams. There are 4 students assigned to 1 doctor per suite. So you really do have a lot of time dedicated to the doctor to ask questions and advice. I have classes in the morning on Monday till about 10:00 am. After that I am assigned in Adult Primary Care in the Eye Center till about 6;30pm. It is a pretty full day. You have a morning staff doctor and also an afternoon doctor. Both of my staff doctors are really great. They really want us to have as much experience as possible. I find that when I learn something and make it applicable I retain the knowledge better. Here in the Eye Center you really do put to use the knowledge you have gained these past 2 years- Its great.
Two more days of the week I have different assignments in the Eye Center. I am involved in the walk-in Clinic for the next few weeks. When people don't have appointments but need to be seen, they will be seen by the students in the walk in clinic. Different areas that we will rotate through this semester are vision therapy, the optical/dispensary, technology (such as OCT, HRT, GDx, fundus camera, visual field machine, etc), and visiting different nursing homes. We get such a variety of different modalities and areas associated with optometry as we go through this semester.
This week was special too because we had our externship meeting. As a fourth year we will do a 4 month clinical internship here at The Eye Center, and 2 four month clinical externships at other locations. These locations can be local and around Memphis, or they can be all over the country; even up in Alaska. One of the externships will be at an institutional site, such as a VA hospital and the other externship site will be at a private practice location. As third years we are in the process of choosing externship sites. It is a fun time to look at the different sites available and the different types of optometric modalities out there.
Also we had the our first annual Housing Fair here at SCO. It was such a success! I wish that when I was getting ready to move out here that they had something like this. This fair provided prospective students and their parents information about different places to live in and around Memphis. There was a student panel in which current SCO students got to discuss where they live, why they live there, how they signed a rental lease, etc. Just about anything about housing was discussed. It was great.
Well that's about it for this week- but I will keep you posted and let you know how next week turns out....
Cheers...