The Thursday before Easter break, third years received our summer quarter schedules. This is our first quarter as third years. It is scary to think that, in less than two months, I will be seeing patients by myself. No longer will we have the safety blanket of one of our peers there to make sure we are doing everything correctly. However, it is also exciting, because it is our next step to becoming real optometrists. We will finally be given the the most challenging patient cases, and will have to apply what we have learned in our advanced courses.
I will have to be in the Primary Care suite twice a week, and in the Contact Lens and Cornea suite once a week. Primary suite has become the second year comfort zone. We know (somewhat) what to expect, and can manage to get reliable results. However, the specialty suites are new terrain. W will have to practice and get used to the new tasks we must perform.
Fortunately, we already started learning about corneal diseases last quarter, and this quarter, we started learning about fitting contact lenses. So far, we have learned about soft spherical contact lenses, toric contact lenses, and I believe colored contacts are next! We are learning what the different materials are and how to tell if a contact lens is a good fit on our patient.
It will be exciting to be able to do all of this on a real patient. I am excited for summer- not only for the weather, but for the new opportunities.