I can't believe how fast time has flew by...I only have about one month before my 2nd rotation ends already! I am still at the Center for the Partially Sighted aka CPS, plus school screenings once a week and the Optometric Center of Los Angeles aka OCLA on Saturdays. CPS has been fairly slow lately, mostly because of the Medi-Cal cuts that occurred recently...basically, the state of California no longer provides reimbursement for optometric devices (including glasses and low vision devices) for patients 21 and over. CPS used to get many patients from this source, and now because of this cut, we see mostly Department of Rehabilitation and cash-paying patients. It's a bit unfortunate because that cuts down on how much we learn here, but regardless I still have learned quite a bit, particularly with the low vision side of optometry. One of the most important things I've learned here in here is how to communicate properly and effectively with low vision patients.

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I came across an amazing article that mentions a tooth that was used to help restore a patients vision...below is a picture that explains it pretty well:


Source

Here is a video that explains it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aN-H_i6Lviw

Among medical professionals, there is a well-known term used called pearls. A pearl is basically an extremely useful piece of information that is used to help you with patient care. For example, a very common optometric pearl is to know that a certain type of cataract (Nuclear Sclerotic Cataract, or NSC) is well known to cause patients to become more nearsighted, also known as a Myopic Shift. Over the past year, I've learned a couple of pearls that have been very useful with diabetic and glaucoma patients...many of these may seem obvious to you already, but I think it's good for us interns to start getting into the habit with early. Also, these pearls are by no means comprehensive - there are many more other things to ask, but these are just some of the things I ask/look for among many other pertinent data to find out:

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