Improving optometry student interpersonal skills through online patient, clinician and student evaluation and feedback.

Clinical Relevance: Interpersonal skills are crucial for successful clinician-patient interactions. To prepare future optometrists for clinical practice, pedagogical evaluation is important to support the implementation of new strategies for teaching and evaluating interpersonal skills.

Background: Optometry students largely develop their interpersonal skills through in-person patient interactions.

Developing culturally safe education practices in optometry schools across Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand.

Access to culturally safe health services is a basic human right, however through the lasting effects of colonisation, oppression, and systemic racism, the individual and community health of Indigenous peoples in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand have been severely impacted. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health and Cultural Safety Strategy of the Australian Health Practitioners Regulation Agency, and the Standards of Cultural Competence and Cultural Safety of the Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians Board of New Zealand, recognise the importance of access to safe health care for Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Māori patients, which encompasses both clinical competency and cultural safety. Universities have an ongoing responsibility to ensure their learning and teaching activities result in graduates being able to provide culturally safe practice.

The Equivalency of the Binocular Indirect Ophthalmoscope Simulator to Peer Practice: A Pilot Study.

Significance: Optometric educators are constantly looking for learning and teaching approaches to improve clinical skills training. In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic has made educators scrutinize the time allocated to face-to-face teaching and practice. Simulation learning is an option, but its use must first be evaluated against traditional learning methods.

A digital resource to assess clinical competency.

Background: Objective structured clinical examinations (OSCEs) are integral to clinical competency-based assessment in health care disciplines. Traditional paper-based OSCEs require considerable administration time and students typically receive an assessment outcome with minimal feedback. We developed and implemented an iPad-based OSCE assessment system in optometry that delivered timely and specific e-feedback.

Use of an automated feedback application to improve communication skills.

This article was migrated. The article was marked as recommended. Effective communication skills are a professional competency, yet are often overlooked during training.

Low vision perspectives on glaucoma.

INTRODUCTION: Glaucoma is one of the major causes of visual impairment, especially in the older population. The aim of this paper is to examine the demographics of patients with glaucoma-induced visual impairment. METHOD: Visual rehabilitation information was analysed for 590 visually impaired patients attending the multi-disciplinary low vision clinic at Kooyong in Melbourne.