I am writing to ask you to work with the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO) on a major initiative to enhance training of ophthalmologists and others to meet the needs of the public for eye care. As ICO President Bruce Spivey, MD, described in the July IFOS Notes (www.icoph.org/news/ifos0607.html), the ICO recognizes both a critical need to improve training and an important opportunity for ophthalmology to provide the leadership. We are urging ophthalmologic societies to work with other groups to define how to improve training in your country and are offering a variety of resources to help you do that. As a first step, I would ask the Representative to the International Federation of Ophthalmological Societies (IFOS) from each IFOS Member to arrange to deliver a presentation on behalf of the ICO entitled “A Critical Challenge for Ophthalmology: Enhancing Training To Meet the Public Need for Eye Care” during a plenary session at your next society Congress. Ideally your presentation would be about 10 or 15 minutes long, but if pressed you could shorten it down some. The critical thing is to get some time to tell your Society members about this important message from the ICO. We have slides available for this presentation (see www.icoph.org/training) and a variety of other resources to support the efforts of your society to improve training www.icoph.org/training/resources.html.) Please let me know at advocacy@icoph.org when you have scheduled this presentation. We will send you an ICO/IFOS flash memory drive (which can be plugged into a USB port on a computer) with the slides and other resources on it. Let me know at if you need any more information. I look forward to hearing from you. Best wishes, Professor Hugh R. Taylor, AC Centre for Eye Research Australia, University of Melbourne |
