AOA Annual summer meeting (Boston 2016)

This past summer, I went to my first major optometry conference as an optometry conference. Every year in the summer months, the American Optometric Association hosts a national meeting. In 2016, it was held at Boston, so me and some optometry friends went there this past July 2016. Here are some clips of what we did! It's expensive to attend a conference because depending on what school you go to, most schools don't give you a stipend to attend a conference as a student. There is usually a registration fee (ranging from $50-100, which is a good deal because as an OD, I hear you pay around $300 per day of conference, at least for the bigger conferences). However, if you look out for smaller conferences in your area, there may be cheaper, smaller scale conferences to go to on the weekend for the networking experiences.

At the conference, you can attend as much Continuing education events as you want and get to meet other practicing optometrists and get a feel for what your future will be like. The conferences also have networking events, lunches, and dinners to meet other optometrists and optometry students around the nation. Sometimes groups at the conference will also host evening socials which are fun to attend to. And of course, being in Boston for the first time, I had to explore the city~~

Wednesday 6.29
Cafe
dinner- Giarcoma (lobster dinner in Boston)

Thurs: 6.30
attend CE event at convention in the morning
Boston Tea Party
Bon mi restaurant
evening- quiz bowl event. This is a student event held annually with AOA. It's a great way for students from optometry schools in U.S. and Canada to cheer on their fellow classmate as they complete in "Student Bowl", which is basically an optometry trivia competition. We get to learn and refresh some optometry facts and "trivia", as well as mingle and network with other students.
After part/social at Hard Rock and bar .

Friday: 7.1
CE event in the morning
James Hook - Lobster rolls for lunch
Attend the residency forum at conference
Walmart reception and ICO reception inside Westin Hotel
attend the after party luxoticca live at royale and after party with other optometry students

-AOA also hosts an after social after the student bowl. This year it was at Hard Rock cafe/bar in Boston. It was cool because it was a silent disco so we were all given headphones to wear, with 3 different types of music to listen to. So when we put the headphones on, everyone can jam to the music of their liking. At the same time, if you wanted to be social and talk to other people, you can take off the headphones and still be able to hear people.

Sat: 7.2
Bee Hive- brunch
Newbury street shopping
Attend scleral event at conference at 3:30
Dinner- Myer Changs
Top of the hub bar

Sun: 7.3
USS Constitution museum
Freedom trail bunker movement
Pauli's-lunch
Beacon hill
Ned Divines pub - clam chowder
Quincy market
Ferry cruise at Boston Harbor

Mon: 7.4
Biking at esplanade
Thinking cup
Paddy O's- lunch

My first Eyewear dispensing shift

I had my first dispensing shift at the Illinois Eye Institute Eyewear Center Monday evening. At first I was little intimidated because I didn't know what to expect.  I also left my wet pen at home, so I was frantically asking people if they had a wet pen I could borrow right before my shift started, but I found out we did not really need it.

So, I entered the eyewear center and went to the "back room", filled out my information on the check off list. This is how it works: whenever a patient comes in, the front desk staff will ring a "doorbell", so if a student clinician is available in the back room, he/she should go out to the front desk area and find out who the patient is and what insurance they have. Sometimes the patient comes in and needs to select a frame, sometimes they want to adjust a frame, or sometimes the patient is coming to pick up a frame (dispensing). We also need to answer the phone and answer the patient's questions or direct them to the right person, but I haven't answered a phone call yet.

Here is an example of the steps I took when working with a patient:

-- The doorbell rings.-- I go up the front desk, figure out what the patient needs. I double check with the staff to figure out which frames the patient can select from that his/her insurance will cover.
-- I go out to the waiting room and call/greet the patient. ("Hi, my name is Elaine and I'll be helping you today...".
-- I take them to the appropriate frames and explain to them what frames they can get with their insurance. While they select the frame I go ahead and make a copy of the prescription to hand to the patient for their own copy. Sometimes the patient has trouble finding a frame they want, so I will try to help and make suggestions for the patient.
-- Once patient finishes selecting frame, I walk them over to a fitting table and take a couple measurements (such as the pupillary distance, or PD), or the segment height (for bifocals) on the patient and make sure the frame they select is suitable. When I finish, I call over an optician who is available to come and double check my work.

After Thoughts

The optical shift is so much more laid back then a clinic shift. I mean, my clinic shifts have been fairly easy as well because I had a nice attending and a reliable partner to work with so far. But based on what I hear, it's not always that smooth, especially when I become a 3rd year.  But the good thing about working by myself, is I get to fully engage with a patient on my own. I was even able to make small talk with the patient I was working on as well! My patients were a store manager for a Starbucks (or that's what she told me), a grandmother who was a retired cook from the Chicago Public schools, a cute young elementary school girl who loves the color pink, a mother who came in for buy frames for her daughter and ended buying one for herself when she found out her insurance also covered frames! and many more~ 

I feel like when I was working with a partner, I didn't have the opportunity to engage in conversation with my patient because I would get self-conscious and feel bad about taking too much time with the patient so I would act more shy and less initiative. It also makes me feel too relaxed and at ease with a partner because I knew I had someone to fall back on. But then again, optical dispensing is less stressful than my clinic shift, but clinic experience is what I came here for! So I need to learn to be more assertive when I return to clinic again!

Hump day for an optometry student

Today is my longest day. I have 4 hours of lecture from 9-1pm. Then I have lab that starts at 1:30 and ends at 5:20pm. During my 30 minutes lunch time, I walk briskly home (luckily my apartment is only a 3 minute walk from campus) and fix up my pre-cooked microwavable meal. I get ready to go back to campus by 1:30 for class.

Today we have ocular physiology and optometry lab. Ocular Physiology lab was fun today. For the first part of the lab, we just answered questions about different cases. For the last part of lab, we played jeopardy using material from ocular physiology/optometry/anatomy etc, basically everything we ever learned so far was applicable. I'm actually thankful I ended up in a majority guys group. Although being with guys has their own disadvantages, today I felt like being in a predominantly male group was good. The guys are more carefree and like "friendly competition". There was another predominantly male group across the room from us and the guys were jokingly trying to "mess" each other up and give wrong answers. (I mean, everyone's smart, I doubt anyone "fell" for it). I feel like this contrasts doing group activities with a bunch of girls where everyone is quiet and independently looking up answers. I mean, that's nice too, but it's also nice to be able to just laugh and joke with guys who are willing to make themselves the center of jokes. Sometimes we get so caught up with trying to study and remember all the little details about school so we can pass our classes/prepare for boards/be better optometrists, but this is just a little reminder that once in a while it's ok to just make fun and laugh it off! I mean, I didn't really take notes of the information during the jeopardy game (I should have), but why does it matter if I'm not a good student once in a while?

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Also, 2 weekends ago, I decided to attend the Illinois Optometric Association convention with my classmate. It took 1 1/2 hours to get there even though it was only 30 miles because of all the heavy traffic. The school provided us free registration fee and 1 free night from Friday to Saturday. It only costed us time to be attend and $40 round trip each for the Uber ride. It was an interesting experience and I hope to attend another convention in the future. Maybe in a different state so I can sight see as well.

Thoughts on clinic

This is my 4th time working in clinic today, while it was my 2nd time being the "doctor". So, let me explain myself a little bit. As a second year, we have finally learned enough clinical skills to start to see some patients. We get paired up with another classmate and alternate being doctor and scribe. The scribe is responsible for making sure everything is documented correctly into the electronic medical record (EHR) while the doctor is graded based on technical skills and efficiency being the doctor. Professionalism & communication is important in either roles.

Being the scribe is so much more chill. During first we year, we got to shadow the 3rd years in clinic and eventually got to check off a couple skills later during first year once we learned enough skills. I also shadowed a lot of doctors coming in to optometry school, so it's not a big worry for me. Also, typing information into the EHR is a pretty easy learning curve.

However, being a doctor is more intimidating! I need to work on my efficiency. I had my last "doctor" shift for the rest of the quarter since we lost a week during my clinic time since we had too many patient no-shows. :( I need to figure out how to ask the correct case history questions to get the appropriate info I need from the patient. I also need to figure out how to not get the patient to ramble too much. I mean, it's fun getting to hear a patient's life story, but sometimes it takes time away from me doing the tests.... I also definitely need to brush up on my skills some more.