Comment on ICO CME Plans

Dear Bruce:

I would like to congratulate you, Professor Tso and all your team for the many successful ICO initiatives in education worldwide. Just one example: having attended and participated in the Program Directors Courses, I can testify that they have had a significant impact in residents education in my region. You have improved ophthalmic education worldwide, thus improving eye care for our patients.

I have been recently nominated as Chair of the ICO Continuing Medical Education Task Force. As our first initiative, we conducted a survey addressed to all Ophthalmology Societies worldwide. We obtained a good number of responses; a second mailing was sent last week to those Societies that have not responded to the first mailing. We will greatly appreciate the cooperation of these Societies.

The survey has told us that all Societies organize CME activities; however, not all of them have a formal CME Program in place or a CME Committee. We believe that Task Force can cooperate with those Societies without a formal CME structure. A simplified CME program, based on proven programs from Societies with a well organized CME Committee, will be offered to those interested Societies.

We are well aware that re-certification is not required in many countries; however, members could be recognized if they collect sufficient number of credits or points. Having such a system in place would stimulate attendance and participation of members in educational activities.

Very few Societies have a skill transfer program. Our duty will be to provide ideas defining which skills can be transferred and by which means. As an example, the use of laser for diabetic retinopathy, a leading cause of blindness, can be transferred to many ophthalmologists; teaching vitreoretinal surgery, on the other side, can only be managed in a formal one year fellowship.

I will appreciate your thoughts and ideas along these lines. I am sure that, with the cooperation of the many minds that participate online forum, we will be able to formulate much better plans.

Juan Verdaguer T.
Professor of Ophthalmology
University of Chile and Los Andes
Chair ICO Task Force on CME
juan.verdaguer.t@gmail.com

Undergraduate Task Force in Ophthalmology – Current Projects

Hello Everyone,

This is Sue Lightman from the Undergraduate Task Force in Ophthalmology. I am putting information on as to what our current projects are and where we are going in the future. My Co-Chair is Professor Peter McCluskey and he is of course intimately involved in the programme. We have completed the review of the Undergraduate Teaching Booklet and the updated version will shortly be available on the ICO website. This is available in English, Chinese, French and Spanish and I am very happy to send anyone a CD with the booklet on in a PDF format so that it can be printed off locally for your use. We have some English booklets if you want to have a look at them and I would be happy to send you some to look at.

Following on from the ICO meeting in Hong Kong in 2008 we were invited by Van Trong to visit the Eye Institute in Hanoi. We spent 2 days teaching undergraduates, seeing patients and teaching postgraduates which was a very interesting experience for all of us. We had two other teachers with us, apart from Peter and myself, who were Richard Andrews and Simon Taylor and as a consequence of this Richard, together with Jasmin Singh went back in March of this year. Again this was a very interesting experience for everyone and was found to be very useful by the Hanoi ophthalmologists. We hope to make this a regular event and in September Richard and Jasmin will go back and this time will follow the visit with a visit to Phnom Penh in Cambodia to do the same, teach undergraduates, see patients and do some postgraduate teaching. This has very kindly been set up by Jim Gollogly.

Following our very interesting time in Hanoi, we have now taken on another centre in Sarajevo. Professor Amila Husovic was very pleased to hear about our interest and a group of us plan to go in March 2010. This will be particularly exciting as the medical students on the ICO taskforce will be coming with us and I hope that this will be a very interesting and useful experience for all of us.

Meanwhile in the UK we continue to teach undergraduates at all levels and the Department of Medical Education at UCL is extremely interested in the professionalisation of medical student teaching and we will shortly be having a joint appointment with them for this.

With best wishes to you all,
Sue Lightman
Professor of Clinical Ophthalmology
UCL/Institute of Ophthalmology & Moorfields Eye Hospital, London
s.lightman@ucl.ac.uk

Please Comment on Refocusing Ophthalmic Education

I would like to invite you to join the ICO in a new initiative to enhance ophthalmic education around the world.

The “Refocusing Ophthalmic Education” proposal suggests that we learn more about modern educational theory and effective methods of teaching adults and share that with ophthalmologic society leaders and educators. This can be the basis for collectively redefining how we train and educate residents and subspecialists, medical students and allied eye care personnel.

You can read the proposal here: http://www.icoph.org/pdf/icorefocusing.pdf.

I am very interested in your comments on this proposed initiative:
• What do you think of this proposed initiative? Would you be interested in working with the ICO on this?
• Can you suggest alternative ways to educate ophthalmologists and others?
• Are there innovative educational programs or resources we should know about?