Most of you probably won't understand this post

Tough.

My jaw hit the floor today. One of the classes Swell and I are in charge of is third year "procedures". I ended up in charge of this one. Basically it is my job to teach THIRD YEAR optometry students how to refract (find a glasses prescription), in addition I am to teach some magic tests optometrists do to determine the status of a patient's binocular vision from which a plethora of treatment options arise. After I teach them that I am suppossed to teach them how to do visual fields (Tangent screen baby! for those who are already confused when I say: "Tangent screen baby!" read "1855 technology baby!" and when I say "technology" read a "black sheet hanging from a wall baby!") Following perimetry (visual field testing) I am supposed to teach them how to use a slit lamp (the light that the optometrist uses to look at the health of your eye - you know when they say: "Look at my ear" and if you're my patient you say: "I can't see your ear" and I say: "That's becuase i) I don't own a comb ii) I cut my hair every 6 months and iii) shut up")

So back to the point of this post. I spent the last two weeks teaching the students a large portion of the distance refraction sequence (finding the glasses one would need for clear distance vision). There was a lot of confusion during this teaching but I thought I cleared it all up.

Today we started the lab portion of this class. I was told that the students knew how to do retinosopy (an objective test that allows the optometrist to figure out the prescription) so I just touched on retinoscopy in lecture. Basically this is retinoscopy and remember you do this and this.

No one mentioned any confusion on that part of lecture. They mentioned confusion on much of the rest of my lectures but not on retinoscopy.

So in the lab portion of the class they were to do retinoscopy on a patient and then 5 other "sphere" tests (what the heck I'll list them here for all of you to know: Bichrome, MSBVA, Equalization, Maximum Plus to 20/20, BSBVA - now you've learned something)

Well I say: "do these things and hand in your sheet when you're done."

Nobody moves. Not a soul. They just stand there staring at each other. Then the questions begin.

"When we're doing the right eye retinoscopy the left eye is occluded right?"

"NO!"

"We just find neutral right."

"NO, please find against in all meridians and then neutralize."

Now I know this is not making sense to the majority of you but suffice it to say these kids are clueless. They haven't an idea about any optometric procedures. They have a small amount of theoretical knowledge but know nothing about the practical aspect of optometry.

We didn't even get through retinoscopy today let alone the other 5 tests. I know have had to scrap the whole idea of going forward with astigmatism testing and revert to at least a week on retinoscopy. I am never going to get through this material.

When I see them again on Monday they will be told that for the rest of the semester they will live and breathe Refraction. If they can't do a complete refractive exam and slit lamp exam within 2 hours by the end of the semester I will consider my time here a failure.

I should have had some idea at how behind these kids were when on the fist day I was asked: "What does OU mean?" (OU means both eyes - something that they should have learned day one.)

Swell is laughing at me because she was faced with similar problems during her "review" of contact lens I with the same students. She is to teach complex contact lens fitting but during her review found out that they don't even know how to vertex correct (determine a contact lens prescription from an eyeglass prescription - which should have been covered in contact lens I).

*sigh.

Wish us luck.