Bonjour

Hi there!! My name’s Dan, I’m an Optometry student here at City, University of London and I’ll be telling you about my experiences while I’m here.

For any of you that would like to know more about my experience at City and Optometry, I have a student profile here www.city.ac.uk/people/students/dan-chung where you can read about me, but if you don’t want to do that, I’ll try to give you a ‘brief’ summary!

So before coming to uni, I was a little unsure of what I wanted to study. I was deliberating between Optometry and Pharmacology so I decided to take a gap year, to work out what I really wanted to do with my life and decided I’d rather look at eyes all day than medication! I always loved coming to London, seeing the different attractions, restaurants, musicals & jazz bars it has to offer and so I thought being on the doorstep to all these amazing facilities is too good to turn down. I decided to visit City, meet some of the lecturers and look at the amazing facilities they had for teaching. They were just opening a new sight clinic with state-of-the-art testing equipment, to provide a lot more comprehensive eye examination for our patients in final year where we test the general public! (EXCITING!!!) This coupled with studying in an amazing city and learning material from experts in their fields that are so passionate and so friendly convinced me to study at City!

While at City, I’ve managed to juggle studying and exploring quite well! I remember one of my first days traveling, I was going to meet my cousin in Chinatown not having a clue how to get there and decided to leave an hour earlier than I needed to (just to be on the safe side)! I knew roughly how to get there from Kings Cross Station though what I failed to realise was Old Street Station (a 5 minute walk from me) was on the same line, and only a few stops away! I caught a bus all the way to Kings Cross, got on the tube and then realised my stupidity. I was then 45 minutes early and had to stand around, looking like a fool while I waited as London transport is a lot more frequent and reliable than transport back home.
My 2^nd stupid moment was catching the Megabus home on quite a few occasions. I decided to use google maps and worked out I needed the Northern line to Kings Cross, then Victoria line to Victoria Coach Station. I knew it was £2.40 to travel on the tube in zone 1 and so thought I would be smart and catch a bus to Kings Cross, then take the underground, thinking I would have a cheaper journey as I needed to take 2 different lines. What I didn’t realise though is I could use any combination of lines to get to my destination for £2.40 as long as I stayed in zone 1. So I ended up taking longer to get to where I wanted to go and also paid more for it. Following these events, I found out about an app called CityMapper which has since saved me a lot more money and time on travel!

Studying at City has been a great experience so far, the level of knowledge you’re taught is incredible and though at first you may think, ‘Why are we learning this??’ it all is very relevant and pops up later on in the course (so stay on top of it)! From week 1 you’re taught how to work out someone’s prescription using retinoscopy, then shortly after you’re already looking at the health of the eye in fine detail with an ophthalmoscope or slit lamp! You are then introduced to other interesting techniques such as subjective refraction where you refine the prescription you found on retinoscopy asking if the letters are clearer with lens 1 or lens 2. This is all very fun as you’re already doing part of your future job. You’ll then work further on these tests in 2^nd year in greater detail, learning how to further refine the prescription between both eyes, completing a full routine eye examination as well as tips and tricks if the patient is not straight forward and so your routine isn’t going particularly to plan.

Some of my favourite clinical techniques I’ve learnt so far is indirect ophthalmoscopy, where you use a slit lamp as well as a volk lens to view the retina with a wider section and in greater depth. Another technique has been determining the pressure inside the eye either by using the dreaded puff of air or anaesthetising the eye then flattening it with force. It may sound a little scary but it’s actually incredibly interesting and once you’ve learnt the mechanism behind the techniques, it becomes a lot more fun. Finally, retinoscopy has become one of my favourite clinical techniques where you’re able to determine a prescription, whether it be simple or complex and so improve the patient’s vision with some lenses. I find it very satisfying reaching the end point where the patient can see clearly though there are times where you do get it wrong 1^st time, but the patient doesn’t need to know that was your attempt to get it right 1^st time, we’re only human!

So despite a busy, stressful exam period, I’m now done for the summer. I’m currently on work experience at a hospital in Luton, shadowing optometrist, orthoptists, ophthalmologists and other healthcare professions, helping me to understand the role in a hospital environment while seeing extremely interesting cases which can be very rare. I hope to work in a hospital during my pre-reg and so over the summer, I shall be applying to many different hospitals until I acquire a placement (hopefully the one I want!). Fortunately, I have 2 interviews at the moment, one next week and the other in a couple weeks’ time so I’m busy preparing for them and hoping they go well.

I also looking into a Specsavers summer placement to gain experience in that area as well as hospital optometry. I shall update you guys about my work experience, hospitals and the placement in my next blog!

Until then, enjoy some Optometry memes!