Deakin to launch first extended optometry residency program

Deakin’s ‘Clinical Residential Placent Program’ has students placed in optometry practices around the country for the last six months of their studies.
The plans are unique and ambitious – to have every student placed full-time for 26 weeks, from Novber this year.
When asked why Deakin preferred to send students out on placent rather than keep th in the controlled environment of a university clinic, Deakin head Professor Harrison Weisinger told Insight: “Regardless of how optometrists have been trained in the past, this model is the future. The days of operating university clinics at a loss are coming to a rapid end. In my opinion, the only way to train optometrists is to put th where optometry happens, not to bring optometry to where students happen”.
Deakin’s students are being prepared for their placents with extensive didactic and clinical skills training at the state-of-art facilities at both the Geelong campus, and the Australian College of Optometry in Melbourne.
Prior to going on placent, students will have undertaken hundreds of hours of practice in skills laboratories, the simulation optometry practice and ACO clinics as well as having to survive vigorous clinical examinations, known as the ‘OSCEs’ (objective structured clinical examinations).
While the extended clinical placents will be the first of their kind in optometry, they have been a staple of medical training for centuries.
“The benefits of extended placents in real optometry practices are legion”, Professor Weisinger said. “Students will be exposed to the full gamut of tasks that are performed in an optometry practice. They will encounter hundreds of patients, not just for a clinical consultation, but also for the full journey from making an appointment through to collecting glasses or contact lenses.
“They’ll have to deal with real practice issues like customer complaints, phoning the Medicare hotline, putting through a health-fund claim, staff rosters, operating a till and taking a deposit. When combined with excellent clinical exposure, that equates to proper work-readiness”.
Deakin is well into its supervisor recruitment campaign, with dozens of practitioners already expressing interest in taking a student into placent.
Mr Sean Martin, newly appointed as head of retail optics and industry relations at Deakin said: “For the past 12 months, we’ve been developing a program that works for both supervising optometrists and our students. We have a comprehensive handbook and online log book that will ensure high standards and monitor students’ progress, while being as minimally disruptive to the operation of a practice as possible. In fact, we are confident that our students will actually add value to the practice at which they are placed.”
Deakin is confident that optometrists from all practice settings will engage in the residential placent program, not least of all because of the opportunity to recruit new practitioners, who will qualify in mid-2015.
Mr. Martin highlighted that students in placent are unpaid and are expected to be involved in all aspects of optometry practice – including front-of-house duties. Supervisors will undertake a modular online training program and will be accredited by the School of Medicine at Deakin prior to taking a student.
Insight was told that supervisors need not necessarily be endorsed to prescribe therapeutics as that experience is guaranteed elsewhere in the program.
Deakin has established a website, www.optomsupervisor.com, to enable optometrists and practice owners to learn more and express interest in taking a student into placent.
Selection processes will commence in July.