GES Boot Camp Session 2 - How'd it go?

So after any number of delays related to the weather we finally managed to meet for Boot Camp Session 2. I think we may need to rethink the timing for Boot Camp next year. Spring might be nice.

Anyway, we spent a little under an hour covering

• definitions of refractive error
• the global burden of refractive error
• the broad outlines of how to refract

There were some good facts in the reading material. Before reading the journal articles I would not have guessed that refractive error was the second leading cause of functional blindness in the world. I never really thought about the difficulty of studying the relative effects of refractive error and how the ophthalmic bias fo using "best corrected visual acuity" in most studies could complicate this. I think I'll leave out the nursing home journal article next year.

The MedRounds refraction tutorial by Dr Zarwell is one of my favorite online sources. If you didn't look it over please do. It's worth your time.

The hands on session was my favorite part. I'd set out with the goal to have everyone get a hand on lensometery, autorefraction and get a feel for retinoscopy. The students exceeded my expectations and a number of you were able to retinoscope me from 20/400 to 20/40.

Thanks to Allison, Vera, Joy, Akshar, Eric and Kari for working with the students during the hands on training. Thanks to everyone who helped clean up afterward. I didn't hear any complaints from the clinic the next day.

I'd love to hear what others thought and I'd love to hear any suggestions for making the rest of the course better this year and next. One of the things I heard was that it would have been better to have one or tow more residents and to set up stations. I'm going to try to make that happen for this Wednesday.

Is the comment function working? Is this mic on?

Jake