Reflecting on my past experiences in the retina clinics, here are some of the challenges that I encountered:
1. Too many patients to see, leading to short period to time to teach the students. SOLUTION: try utilizing the one-minute preceptor technique.
2. Students present cases without having seen the retina of the patient with retinal disease! They join the clinic with little or experience performing funduscopy. It eats up a lot of time to just teach this skill. SOLUTION: Inform and encourage all students about to rotate to the retina clinic to perform funduscopy in the General Clinic on as many patients as they can.
3. As the residents present all the new cases, the student just stand idly by on the side, listening to my discussion with the residents while he waits for his turn to present his case. I don’t even know if he understands what I have been discussing with the residents. SOLUTION: Ask the student to present his case first, so that he will be more relaxed while the rest of the cases are being presented. Tell the residents that the student must also know the gist of the other cases and read up a little bit on them while waiting for the consultant to arrive.
