Education in Ocular Disease
Learning eye disease in the Kansas City VA Optometry Residency is an exciting mix of didactic education, self-study, and patient care. We understand that there are three steps to learning the medicine of optometry: learning the facts, organizing the facts, and applying the organization to help your patients. Our experience is that optometry school does a nice job of teaching the facts. We think we excel at helping you to organize the material so it makes sense to you, so you can recall it, and so you can take excellent care of your patients. (This would be a great topic to discuss with our former residents when you contact them.)
The third step (applying the organization to patients) is, of course, the most important and you will do it better when you have mastered the organization. Residents will see a wide range of glaucoma, macular disease, cataract, and diabetic patients. You will be given a lot of decision making responsibility for these patients. We want to provide just the right amount of guidance to help you grow as a decision maker. You’ll see many other eye problems, but in less frequency than those four.
Each day begins with an hour-long discussion of eye disease (we also do this for 2 hours on Friday afternoons). We think the discussions are relevant, stimulating, and thought provoking (another statement to verify with our former residents). They are designed to help you to understand eye disease in a way that doesn’t require rote memorization. Instead, they give you a framework to figure out a solution to any patient problem – even if you haven’t seen it before.
Your education in eye disease will be most influenced by the patients you examine. They will provide the experience you need and be the source of the questions you ask. The best students of any kind are the best questioners. We want to encourage your interest in, and nurture your ability to become, a great questioner. All learning begins with a question – when you ask great questions here, you will be rewarded with an opportunity to learn.
A fundamental goal of our program is to develop great lifelong learners - doctors who see the value in studying about patient care and doctors who excel at reading an article. So, much of your learning will be done on your own, but we want to guide you through this as well. We will teach you how to read and interpret medical literature, so you can draw your own conclusions and apply your learning to excellent patient care. You will become an expert at reading and applying evidence based medicine.
Education in Low Vision
The Kansas City VA offers a unique education in low vision because we provide care to patients with a wide range of vision loss and because we have so many options for solving their visual needs. As a resident, you are an important member of our low vision rehabilitation team - spending about a half day a week working on low vision.
You will be working with veterans with mild to profound vision loss – great preparation for providing care for people with a range of visual needs. Examining these patients will help you to overcome any apprehensions about working with the visually disabled, will introduce you to many creative solutions for helping them, and will allow you to play a role as part of a vision rehabilitation team. You will be working with a great staff - trained in low vision rehabilitation, computer access training, orientation and mobility, and activities of daily living.
Most residents who begin our program have had limited experience with low vision, so the optometry staff is always available with practical patient-care advice. We complement the hands-on education with weekly conversations and instruction in low vision care. The residents learn low vision from their patients, the optometry staff, and from the rehabilitation staff.
The low vision education at the Kansas City VA has inspired many of our residents to practice low vision – some part time, some full time, and a few who are directors of low vision clinics. Others, who are less interested in practicing low vision after residency, benefit from studying low vision here because they gain a much deeper understanding of eye disease by participating in the rehabilitation process.
The Art of Doctoring and Teaching
Your experience will be broadened through our efforts to work on the art of doctoring. We think and talk about this daily, but we also have a weekly discussion on a variety of topics with relevance to medicine, but is a step beyond the science of medicine – topics that range from patient communication to self awareness to leadership. Our assigned readings might be about critical thinking, the experience of being a patient, or evidence-based medicine. We think that great doctors have a breadth of abilities and we want to help you work on many of them.
The Kansas City VA is a great place to prepare to be a teacher. We are passionate about great teaching here and we have graduated some wonderful teachers. We are aware that teaching is instinctive to many doctors, but there is also an art that is less intuitive. While here, you will read some of the great books on teaching in medicine (which helps you understand yourself as a learner too) and we will have several discussions helping you to form your philosophies as a teacher.
Your residency year is also the right time to explore and clearly define your philosophies on doctoring.
We will guide you in doing this broadly – deciding what kind of person you want to be will influence the kind of doctor you will be. Your purpose and motives in doctoring, the relationship you want to have with patients, and how you define the doctor's role will also influence the kind of doctor you will be.
We will also guide you in developing your philosophies more narrowly - using the year to define your management philosophies (and reasons behind them) for all eye diseases that you are likely to encounter at least occasionally. You should be able to identify the evidence for your philosophies. Well-considered philosophies can be an excellent guide to making wise decisions in difficult circumstances.