Innovations in Education: Self-Guided Curriculum for Ocular Exam Skills

Although vision health is so important to daily life and well-being, medical schools have drastically decreased time dedicated to ophthalmology over the past decade. As a result, only a small portion of medical students consider ophthalmology as a subspecialty, and primary care providers are poorly equipped to stabilize and triage ocular diseases. There is a dire need for educational innovations to enhance ophthalmology curriculum in medical school.

Madeline Yung, MD, has created a self-guided curriculum for ocular exam skills, where a series of modules assist students in independently learning essential exam components such as measuring vision or using a slit lamp. These modules are flexible, easily accessible, and have been shown to be just as effective as a dedicated individualized preceptor session. Early success of this curriculum has been published in the Journal of Academic Ophthalmology and been supported by UCSF Innovations in Education funding as well as the Hellman Fellowship.

Pictured below are several screenshots from the training video: