The Guyana Association of Optometrists (GAO) held its first continuing education (CE) optometry seminar on June 1, 2013 at the Georgetown Club.
Participants comprised Optometry students from the University of California, Berkley; University of the West Indies, St Augustine, Trinidad; and the University of Guyana.
A release from the association pointed out that CE is important for any professional to keep informed of current developments and further advances in their field. Optometrists require a minimum number of CE credits to maintain their registration in countries abroad.
Previously optometrists in Guyana had to travel abroad to attend Council on Optometric Practitioner Education (COPE) accredited lectures.
The GAO plans to have an annual seminar to meet COPE standards by attracting internationally recognised speakers to make continuing education courses available to licensed optometrists so that they would be able to fulfil their CE requirements for licence renewal in Guyana. This will be especially important when the first batch of locally trained optometrists at the University of Guyana graduates.
At the seminar, the main speaker was Dr Maziar Haririfar, clinical professor from the University of California, Berkley. His presentations were entitled ‘Triage of red eyes’, ‘Hypertension management as an optometrists/headache diagnosis’, and ‘Case presentations – grand round style’. The other speaker was Dr Neeraj Jain, consultant ophthalmologist at the Balwant Singh hospital. His topic was ‘Paediatric eye examination’.
There was also a hands-on workshop on ‘Orientation to the posterior pole of the fundus using the binocular indirect opthalmoscope (BIO)’.
The release said that the seminar concluded with certificates being given for participation in the seminar and in the Joint Eye care clinics held earlier in the week at Wales, West Bank Demerara, Cane Grove, East Coast Demerara and at Wismar, Linden. Plaques were also given to the teams from the three universities.
The executive of the GAO expressed thanks to the sponsors of the seminar: Industrial Safety Supplies; ANSA McAl; North American Resources Inc.; Pereira Mining Co.; Ming’s Products and Services; Banks DIH and Demerara Distillers Ltd.
GAO said that if the organisation can get additional sponsorship or assistance from the Ministry of Health, it would be able to invite all eye care professionals to future seminars.
