Advances in Medical Education and Practice (Mar 2017)
Improving medical students' proficiency in ophthalmoscopy
Abstract
Subothini Sara Selvendran, Sudeep Kumar Biswas, Nikhil Aggarwal Department of Undergraduate Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, UK We read with great interest the article by Gilmour and McKivigan, which assessedmedical students’ ability to accurately match fundus pictures with real patients using ahand-held ophthalmoscope.1 The results demonstrated that only 30% of students wereable to do so accurately, signifying a gap in ophthalmoscopy training.1 Ophthalmoscopyis an essential skill that needs to be grasped sufficiently during medical school. It is anessential method used for screening and early detection of a number of pathologicalconditions with the aim of preventing vision loss. Being medical students, we concurwith the observation made by Gilmour and McKivigan that almost universally studentslack confidence with this physical examination. Ophthalmic medical education hasgradually decreased;2 therefore, the authors are right to suggest a novel approach thatcan be used for training and assessment purposes to improve and revitalize learningin this area. View the original paper by Gilmour and colleague.
