Abstract
Purpose :
All physicians, regardless of their speciality have encountered a patient with an ocular complaint in their training. Therefore, all undergraduate medical education programs should provide proper teaching regarding common or potentially devastating ocular diseases and how to perform a proper ophthalmic exam . Classical curriculums often lack adequate amount of exposure in ophthalmology before the medical student’s clinical rotations. The aim of this study is to analyse the effect of a novel online learning platform on medical student performance, clinical experience and overall comprehension in Ophthalmology.
Methods :
Curriculum development included labelled diagrams of the slit lamp, tonopen and ophthalmoscope with clear step-by-step instructions on how to easily use these fundamental ophthalmic instruments. Every student received a clinical kit composed of relevant and practical guides including images of common ocular diseases and templates for taking a comprehensive ophthalmic exam, which were also available on an interactive website. Diagrams and quizzes were supplemented with online instructional videos on how to perform an ophthalmic exam. An online platform was developed with pre and post-rotation questions to gauge the knowledge acquisitionduring their rotation and each student filled out an evaluation.
Results :
More than 150 medical students took part in all parts of the learning modules. Pre-rotation and post-rotation quiz scores were analyzed showing an improvement in the knowledge level of the majority of students with better scores in the post-rotation quizzes as compared to the pre-tests. On the cross-sectional survey, most students rated the learning program as very helpful in improving their basic knowledge in Ophthalmology and understanding of the ophthalmic exam and agreed that the program should be included in future medical student teaching.
Conclusions :
We strongly believe that an online-based course with abundant visual resources can help future physicians to recognize common ophthalmic conditions with the advantage of re-utilizing these resources at any time for future clinical practice. This will allow them to develop the tools in assessing the clinical severity of ocular disease and ultimately help them better understand the principles behind proper treatment and referral in the context of Ophthalmology.
This is an abstract that was submitted for the 2018 ARVO Annual Meeting, held in Honolulu, Hawaii, April 29 - May 3, 2018.