ACOE_Self-Study

of deficiency, study skills, test taking strategies, and directions to find assistance for psychosocial issues.

2. The Clinical Remediation Program: Students performing at or below minimal competency in clinical programs are identified using the clinical grading rubric. Since 2 015, these students’ performance has been carefully reviewed by the Clinical Remediation Program Director working with a clinical education team made up of 3 rd and 4 th year Clinical IORs, the director of externships, and the chair of the department of clinical education. Competency in various areas are reviewed and difficulties diagnosed in such areas as basic and optometric knowledge, skills, patient care and case decision making, communication, and professionalism are identified. A clinical enhancement plan is developed, and the clinical faculty “coach” is identified and paired with the student to remediate the deficiencies. Electives in the Professional Degree Program In response to student requests and the desire to provide more opportunity for students to customize their professional degree education by adding material that they find particularly interesting and valuable to them, after several years of planning we implemented an elective program in AY 2013-14. The electives provide an opportunity for deeper treatments of special topics in small group environments and may contain both didactic and clinical training opportunities. The College continues to assess student interest periodically and expands its elective course offerings accordingly. A catalog of elective courses can be found at https://www.sunyopt.edu/pdfs/academics/electives_catalog_sp17.pdf or in Appendix II-5 . Expansion of the Fourth-Year Externship Program Since at least 1995, fourth-year optometry students had typically participated in up to two off- campus clinical rotations as part of the externship program. As part of the planning process for the increased student enrollment that commenced in 2012, the College analyzed patient flow at its on-campus clinic, the University Eye Center (UEC), and determined that the increased enrollment could potentially reduce the number of patients seen by students rotating through the UEC. Student exit surveys indicated strong student satisfaction with the externship program, and the number of patients seen by students at these sites was high as tracked by the Meditrek system used for this purpose. These results helped inform the College’s decision to increase the number of external rotations from two to three during the 2014 – 2015 academic year. Exit surveys continue to show strong student satisfaction with the externship program, and the number of student-patient encounters at these sites remained high. Revision of Clinical Optometry Sequence The revision of the Clinical Optometry sequence was put into place at the start of the Fall semester for the Class of 2020 ( Appendix II-11b ). The changes in the sequence were in response to and in anticipation of changes in clinical optometric practice and in the health care delivery system. The revision process included assessment of the sequence using the ASCO Attributes of Students Graduating from Schools and Colleges of Optometry Report to articulate the skill set needed by graduating optometry students, results from discussions at Dean’s Council, faculty

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