Blog

Opinion, commentary, and notes from the editorial team.

1–10 of 33 articles Page 1 of 4
  1. 18 Jan 2023 13 min read

    Innovative Safety Methods Employed For Delivering Quality Patient Care in a High Volume Tertiary Eye Care Setting By Recycling Available Resources and Integrating Information System During COVID Crises

    “Never let good crises go to waste.” - - Winston Churchill The Lockdowns are back, as the cities are once again bracing for a steep influx of patients suffering from or suspected to be infected from the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), owing to the soaring second wave of COVID-19. We as practicing ophthalmologists, need to keep our guard up now, more than ever. The need of the hour is the safety for our health, safety of the health of our health care workers and the patient’s health who visit our hospitals; along with simultaneously delivering high quality productive patient care. This drives the need for devising, effective and innovative safety strategies during the COVID-19 crises (Figure 1). Figure 1: Comprehensive Innovative Safe Practice Pattern Work Flow Utilization of hospital car parking area for COVID-19 triage Triaging has become a mandatory part of our pandemic practice, but the dearth of available space for triaging needs to be addressed. The sprint is on as eye care professi

    Dr. Prasanna Venkatesh Ramesh · Dr. Shruthy Vaishali Ramesh
  2. 4 Aug 2021 3 min read

    Practical Tips for DNB Practical

    It’s time to brace yourself for DNB practicals, in its new Avatar! One look at its design tells that it has been well designed for accurate and speedy assessment of Examinees with little room for chance or bias. So let’s deconstruct it for better understanding and decode it for exploiting to our advantage! Firstly 50% of marks i.e 150 marks comes from Objectively Structured Clinical Evaluation or OSCE, which is a good News. Historically most students from the DNB stream, find OSCE easy to answer. OSCE covers a wide range of concepts in ophthalmology creating a level playing ground, compared to taxing Case Presentations. Few tips for your OSCE. This time, OSCE mimics a theory exam! you are all seated in a hall and the different stations (slides) are streamed on the screen by the NBEMS command center. The answers have to be written on separate sheets for each station. Make sure that you give away the answer sheet after each station. Write with a dark blue or black pen which makes your wr

    Dr. Krishnaprasad R
  3. 5 Sep 2020 9 min read

    Happy Teachers Day: A tribute to all my teachers who inspired me in ophthalmology

    "The mediocre teacher tells. The good teacher explains. The superior teacher demonstrates. The great teacher inspires."-William Arthur Ward "Teachers, I believe, are the most responsible and important members of society because their professional efforts affect the fate of the Earth." -Helen Caldicott, Physician and Author Teachers are the backbone of any academic institution and always play a significant role in shaping the life and career of students. Teachers are the lights of our life as they sculpture us to bring the best out of us and inspire us to excel in professional life. On the occasion of Teacher’s Day (September 5, 2020), I thankfully acknowledge all the hard work done by all my teachers to shape a career in ophthalmology. This tribute is dedicated to all the teachers who worked during the junior residency (ophthalmology) period at the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research, Chandigarh, India. The Excellent Teachers with Passion for teaching and Training

    Dr. Suresh K. Pandey
  4. 1 Jul 2020 12 min read

    Meeting and Teaching in the VIrtual space: Dawn of a new era in Ophthalmic education

    The whole world is passing through an unprecedented crisis due to CoVid19. During such difficult times, education and academics have also suffered and undergone tremendous changes worldwide. Innovations and adapting to newer technology has been the key to keeping continuous teaching and learning. Here we have a look at a conversation involving two academicians and global teachers discussing how to overcome the issues at hand during these difficult times. On our request, Meenakshi Swaminathan spoke to Karl Golnik, MD, MEd, Chair, Education Coordinating Committee, International Council of Ophthalmology. Karl Golnik, MD, MEd is a neuro-ophthalmologist at the University of Cincinnati Gardner Neuroscience Institute; a professor of ophthalmology, neurology and neurosurgery at the Cincinnati Eye Institute and the University of Cincinnati; and professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Louisville. He is also Chairman of the department of ophthalmology at the University of Cincinnati. Curr

    Dr. Meenakshi Swaminathan
  5. 18 May 2020 6 min read

    COVID 19 and New Normal: What changes we can see in the Field of Ophthalmology

    Covid 19 has taken the entire world in its grip and normal life as we knew it till now, is in complete disarray. New vocabulary with words like Lockdown, Social distancing, respiratory hygiene, and PPE are becoming increasingly common in everyday life. However, normal is something that changes all the time; what was normal 10 years or even 50 years ago, is not normal today and this change is a continuous process. Just as we have had rapid changes in the last few decades, we will rapidly adapt to a new set of “normal” rules governing our lives. In fact, times and crises like these accelerate many changes. As far as Ophthalmology or any other medical specialty is concerned, these are essential activities that will have to rapidly adapt sooner rather than later so that we can continue to function, providing essential services with a lot of caution, caution that might have been considered unnecessary or abnormal till now. Some of the key changes that are sure to be seen in the near future

    Dr. Vidushi Sharma
  6. 18 May 2020 3 min read

    Teach to Reach: Journey of An Ophthalmologist Youtuber

    It all started in my first year of residency when my campaign 'Teach To Reach' was born. Ophthalmology was not my preferred branch, but teaching has always been my passion. To accept my new found career, I integrated my passion into my profession. So, by teaching ophthalmology, I started to enjoy the process of learning. Mundane topics became fascinating when I explained to my peers. Then, I began screen recording my presentations for PG aspirants and uploaded them on my YouTube channel called King's Crux. As my clinical experience grew, I slowly shifted my focus towards residents. To date, I strive to create quality-rich content for my audience. Whenever I upload new content, I add the link to the Facebook page. Using an iPad, I create short illustrated notes and lecture handouts for my online classes. I extrapolated my note-taking venture into creating a handwritten manual on the Clinical Embryology of the Eye. Then, I replaced the technical jargon in my handouts with simple illustra

    Dr. Pranesh Balasubramaniam
  7. 18 May 2020 8 min read

    APPs in India: Smartphone Apps in ophthalmology

    Smartphone Applications (Apps) have entered all the spheres of our life- whether its music, food or plain old messaging. Information is now easily accessible from the palm of your hand and ophthalmology has been one of the first few medical branches to embrace this. Here are a few apps designed by Indian ophthalmologists and engineers that are changing the way we look at smartphones. Apps for Your Clinics Toric IOL Axis Marker Developed by: Dr. Girish Jethwa and Dr. Mukesh Dholakia Requirement for installation: Smartphone with the operating system Android 5.0 and up Free Click the Link In this App, the axis of a reference blood vessel is measured after capturing an image of the patient’s eye in sitting position. This image is then again utilized during the surgery, to help in the correct orientation of the Toric IOL Marker and to mark the IOL axis in reference to- this blood vessel. This avoids misalignment of Toric IOL due to cyclotorsion of the globe in lying down position. iToric Pa

    Dr. Shana Sood
  8. 18 May 2020 9 min read

    My Appventure

    My journey of programming and making Apps is spread over several years starting from school days. I studied in a CBSE school in Kerala and computer science was one of the mandatory extra subjects that I looked forward to. These were the days of Windows 3.1 and early Windows 95. MSDOS was still popular. In 5th standard, we started learning the basics of computer programing with LOGO or Turtle, where you can give commands to a triangle on screen and make it draw lines. Though the teachers taught us only the code for drawing straight lines, some of us students learnt that we could combine multiple commands to create complex shapes. The next couple of years, we started with GW-BASIC and QBASIC with which we learnt to get an INPUT from the user and produce a meaningful OUTPUT. Most of us looked forward to playing the games on the lab computers rather than the programming. Once the concepts were clear, I was able to make a random number “hand cricket” game in BASIC. When we got a computer at

    Dr. John Davis Akkara
  9. 18 May 2020 8 min read

    Smart Apps for the Smart Ophthalmologists

    Since the dawn of the smart-phone era, medicos of all specialties have had various apps at their disposal; either for educational purposes or simply as a clinical tool to be used in their outpatient departments. In the field of ophthalmology, we have a wide variety of apps designed for functions ranging from auto-refractometry to learning how to create a continuous curvilinear capsulorhexis. There are multiple apps that many of may still not have heard of or got around to using, so we have highlighted them for easy reference. Eye-Tube Eye-tube provides free digital access to the world’s largest online surgical video archive dedicated to ophthalmologists. It delivers more than 3,000 videos and is the only online archive of fully narrated ophthalmology videos. Eyetube offers eye care professionals an expansive range of multimedia content covering seven ophthalmic subspecialties as well as symposia, roundtable discussions, product descriptions and interactive discussion boards. Dedicated

    Dr. Rwituja Thomas · Dr. Rohit Rao · +1 other
  10. 14 May 2020 4 min read

    Its back to ABC, as we ReBOOT post COVID-19

    SARS-COV-2 an organism invisible to the eye has brought the world to a standstill. The crisis has surely put the spotlight on Health Care Workers who have across the world demonstrated high levels of commitment and saved millions, putting their own lives at risk. The global pandemic has impacted every ophthalmologist across our country and none of us expect to return to life as normal as we knew it. After a couple of decades specializing in eye care, we have been forced to relook at the A, B, and C. A: Accept Reality & Change Your Approach COVID -19 is a crisis. What this implies is that this is non-routine, important, and time-dependent. Stephen Covey had articulated, any situation could be divided into 2 areas. There are things that worry, bother, and frustrate you. We cannot do much but could learn from this area of concern. The second is a realm we have an influence and can definitely act. It is important to be conscious of this, in the context of COVID-19 and how we react. This is

    Dr. Kaushik Murali