The University of Canberra (UC)’s optometry clinic has undergone expansion, allowing for a greater number of consultations and sustaining the growing number of students in optometry and vision science.
The clinic opened in 2020 and featured four consultation rooms, one special instrument room, one dispensing room, and a frame room. The increased footprint adds four consultation rooms and two special instrument rooms to the clinic.
It also increases the specialty services available to the Canberra community. These include a Functional and Low Vision Clinic for people wanting to improve their vision for activities, people with vision impairment, and speciality contact lens clinics for conditions such as keratoconus, myopia control and binocular vision training.
“We now have a new dry eye clinic, that includes an intense pulsed light (IPL) device and we’re excited to be adding virtual reality vision training to our suite of offerings,” Dr Mei Ying Boon, Associate Professor and Discipline Lead in Optometry and Vision Science in the University’s Faculty of Health, said.
With consultations led by Master of Optometry students under the guidance of clinical supervisors, the expansion provides more opportunities to run consultations and gain clinical experience.
“This semester we have been so much more productive with the four additional rooms up and running,” Master of Optometry student Esman Ayan said.
“Instead of playing an ancillary role and offering support to the clinic when there aren’t enough testing rooms, students are getting even more opportunities to run consultations.”
The expansion also aids the UC’s collaboration with Canberra Health Services, where people with chronic eye conditions such as glaucoma can bypass hospitals to receive the treatment from the university’s optometry clinic.
“This alleviates some strain in public ophthalmology so doctors can provide more surgical interventions,” Boon said.
Optical retailer Specsavers is a major donor to the optometry clinic and works with UC to offer placement and employment opportunities for students and graduates.
“Specsavers shares the University of Canberra’s ambition for clinical excellence and is committed to accessible, affordable and quality care. We are very proud to be supporting the expansion of this clinic to help develop the next generation of optometrists,” said Dr Benjamin Ashby, director of optometry for Specsavers Australia and New Zealand.
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