Residency
Residency training is one of the most rigorous parts of the ophthalmologist’s training. The resident must see a large number and variety of patients in order to gain the experience needed for practice and board certification. It is often necessary for residents to rotate through several hospitals in order to meet these requirements.
The resident's educational experience must be designed and supervised by the teaching program director. The program must include four components.
- Didactic Instruction in the Basic and Clinical Sciences, Residents should be educated in basic and clinical sciences through lectures and/or regularly scheduled discussions relevant to the practice of ophthalmology. Regularly scheduled, required lectures or seminars are held at the parent institution. The curriculum must encompass a minimum of 360 hours of instruction for residents during the thirty-six-month training program, at least 240 of which must be intramural (held at various, cooperating hospitals).
- Case Presentations and Clinical Conferences. A minimum of eight hours per month is devoted to regularly scheduled case presentations and clinical conferences attended by faculty and a majority of residents. Residents present patient case histories, and their diagnoses and recommendations for treatment are discussed by their peers and instructors.
- Pathology. The training experience in ocular pathology is comprised of continuing intramural lectures, conferences, and a minimum of fifty hours of laboratory experience in gross and microscopic examination of pathological specimens.
- Clinical Experiences. The volume and variety of clinical ophthalmological problems in children and adults must be sufficient to afford each resident a graduated supervised experience with the entire spectrum of ophthalmic diseases so that the resident may develop diagnostic, therapeutic, and manual skills and judgment as to their appropriate use. This segment of resident’s training includes outpatient, surgical, and consultation experience.
The outpatient experience for a resident during the three-year training program should consist of a minimum of approximately three thousand patient visits appropriately distributed through a broad range of ophthalmic disease indults and children. There must be appropriate faculty supervision in all visits. Direct faculty supervision is presenting at least two-thirds of all visits. Residents have major management responsibility, under supervision, in at least two thousand of those visits. A minimum of fifteen hundred of these patients should be refracted by the resident.
In addition, residents perform and assist at sufficient surgery to become skilled as general ophthalmic surgeons. For example, each resident's experience typically includes a minimum of twenty-five cataract procedures and ten strabismus procedures, during which the resident has major technical and patient care responsibilities. Each resident has sufficient surgical experience—including laser surgery in cornea, glaucoma, retina/vitreous, oculoplastic, and trauma cases—to provide a solid base for general ophthalmic practice.
Each resident also cares for a minimum of 150 patients seen in consultation during the course of three years of training. The types of cases seen should cover a wide spectrum of ophthalmic disease and ophthalmic manifestations of systemic diseases.
Fellowships
Ophthalmic fellowships are for ophthalmologists who wanton continue their education beyond residency in order to become experts in a sub-specialty. Their hands-on training is generally focused on a particular type of patient or disease. They train at eye institutes or large universities where they are expected to participate in research projects, publish papers, and present conferences in addition to caring for patients.
