Early Clinical Exposure

Transcript

All right, let’s head over and meet Pratik, a third year doctor of optometry student at PCO. He’s gonna tell you about all the different hands-on learning experiences including externships, field work and clinical rotations, Salus students are exposed to starting their first year. While serving a very diverse patient population at the university’s clinical facilities, he has witnessed some truly life changing moments. Pratik, please take it away.

– Hey there, one of the best things about Salus University is the fact that clinical experience is given to students so early on. Starting first year, students are expected to shadow and follow upperclassmen and doctors at our prestigious Eye Institute, also known as TEI for short, to gain hands-on experience from the start. This facility has fantastic staff that helps operate several specialty suites such as primary care, neuro, glaucoma, emergency, low vision, pediatrics, contact lens and so much more. With a diverse patient population, many of whom come from underrepresented communities, students are able to see a wide variety of cases and diseases, which we as student doctors can learn from while also providing the best patient care possible. I still remember when an elderly patient came in to receive a new pair of reading glasses. After just a few simple tests such as seeing how his pupils reacted to light and how well his color vision was. We were able to diagnose him with Diabetic Retinopathy and Glaucoma, something never previously noted in his chart. With the help of my precepting doctor, we were able to provide him with the help and further testing he needed to help preserve and cherish the vision he had left. Along with TEI, we have other satellite locations located within 15 minutes of our main campus that provide the same great care. Speaking about our main campus, that’s where our two other onsite clinical facilities are located. The Pennsylvania Ear Institute and the Speech Language Institute for our audiology and speech language pathology programs. In our clinical skills lab, students learn everything from basic to advanced skills to help them prepare for clinic and rotations, skills such as taking a patient’s visual acuity, dilating a patient, inserting and removing a contact lens, foreign body removal and so much more. We also have a 3D virtual reality lab that helps teach more challenging skills to students on computer simulated heads. This helps us gain the muscle memory and practice needed before we perform the skills on actual patients. Personally, I’ve spent countless days in the clinical skills lab and can still remember the hours and hours of practice days and weeks before our practical testing, run through, after run through it was definitely exhausting, but well worth our time especially when you get to practice with peers and friends that have similar goals. Salus students are exposed to field work, extensive training and externships that expand across all programs in the form of clinical rotations. With rotations, Salus students experience real world optometric and clinical environments much earlier than other schools. On top of that, we receive an additional four quarters of rotational experience with sites all across the country and some across the world in Asia and Europe. I believe that after all the hard work we put into learning in class and taking every test, being able to use those skills to better the lives of real patients is a priceless experience. Through hands-on practice and early exposure, I know Salus is helping me become the best doctor I can be. Now back over to Alex.

– Thank you for sharing Pratik. Fieldwork experience is one of the most important steps students take in training to become future healthcare professionals. As Pratik just described, the firsthand experience he gained throughout his medical training at Salus presented diverse challenges, making him equipped to take on his future in healthcare. Cheers Pratik.