UMeyecare

Report from Daryl Guest, Director UM Eyecare Clinic.

Staff

2018 has brought a number of changes to the optometric staffing at UMeyecare. Amongst the exciting news is that Tim Martin has been promoted to Level B by the University. Tim is the first Clinical Teaching Instructor that we have had since inception in 2008 that has been promoted to Level B.

A second piece of exciting news is that we have our first staff member on maternity leave. Maria Bui is now the proud mother of healthy baby girl. In her absence we have employed Wei-lin Tsai to take on most of Maria’s clinical teaching load. Joe Wang has also joined the core Clinical Teaching Instructor team 3 days a week.

From last year, rather than having external CTI’s providing one session of teaching per week or per fortnight, we have been trialing having clinical supervisors attend for the whole day. Katrina Yap on Mondays, Justin Maher on Tuesdays (supervising the paediatric clinic) and Lahiru Kulathunga on Wednesdays are providing an energy and teaching consistency that is benefiting the students. Our overall staffing mix of two thirds time, full day a week, sessional and academic staff members is a good balance of consistency, engagement, and novel ideas that a teaching clinic thrives on.

With all clinic staff involved in of a range outside activities including private practice, research, lecturing and preclinical teaching the students have access to a wide range of views and experience. What we would like to see is a few older heads in the clinic. Richard Vojlay, Russell Lowe and myself bring a different perspective again gained by years of experience in the profession. We would like to talk to other experienced practitioners that could bring their voice to the mix of clinical teachers.

Services

We have two recent equipment arrivals at UMeyecare: a Zeiss IOL Master and a Swept-source Tocpon Triton OCT-A.

The main function of the IOL Master is in the assessment of patients for cataract surgery at the RMH Ophthalmology@UMeyecare clinic on Friday mornings. A side advantage of having the A scan is in the monitoring of patients undergoing myopia management. We are seeing increasing numbers of patients seeking myopia management and the A scan is a valuable tool in these burgeoning therapies.

Swept Source OCT-A is still in its early days clinically. A group of patients that we have been using the new OCT on are patients with diabetic retinopathy. UMeyecare is collecting data on diabetic retinopathy through the Diabetic Eye Screening and Investigation Clinic (DESIC). Data is being collected on all enrolled diabetic patients at UMeyecare and for two collaborative research projects (involving CERA, Royal Melbourne Hospital, and the Royal Women’s Hospital).

Remember that private practitioners are welcome to refer their patients in to utilise all or part of the services provided by UMeyecare. We are happy to provide a consulting service to assist practitioners in managing complex contact lens fitting (including ortho K), myopia management (including atropine therapy), glaucoma assessment (with Graham Lakkis), occupational colour vision assessment (with John Parkes), and diabetes screening.