UCLA Opthalmology

 

General Information

You will master strabismus, refractive error, amblyopia, and basic ophthalmologic testing on the UCLA Peds ophtho elective. 

 

Contact info

Joseph Demer, MD (JDemer@jsei.ucla.edu)

Yolanda McNair (Mcnair@jsei.ucla.edu) x55931

Dr. Demer will approve your elective. As far as your schedule goes, they typically do not arrange things for you because it is already set up to be very friendly to shadowing. You can email individual attendings if you have questions, but it's not necessary to email each attending daily to let them know you're coming.

 

Schedule

Depending on who is on vacation or has cancelled clinics, there may be ~5-6 half-days of clinic that you can attend per week. Optional things in brackets - if you want to go to the OR or fellows clinic, this would need to be arranged ahead of time on a case-by-case  basis. The fellows have lectures all afternoon on Wednesday, and you can ask if there are any relevant lectures.

 

Basic schedule (usually you will have an additional AM or PM off due to vacations or canceled clinics):

 Monday all day

 Tuesday all day

 Wednesday AM +/- lecture in PM

 Thursday all day

 Friday off

 

Detailed schedule:

 Monday: Velez (all day), Pineles (PM only)

 Tuesday: Isenberg (all day), Demer (all day), [Pineles OR (all day)]

 Wednesday: Velez (AM), Isenberg (AM), [Demer OR (AM)], [lectures in the afternoon]

 Thursday: Demer (all day), Velez (AM), Pineles (PM), Isenberg (PM), [Isenberg OR (AM)]

 Friday: [Zhang (all day)], [Chang (all day)]

 

Typically, there are 15-25 patients scheduled in a half day. They generally go over the allotted time and AM clinics can go until 1pm or so. When you start at 7, that's a long time, so it's a good idea to politely remind them that you have noon conference around 11:50. You are free to stay through noon conference if there is something very interesting going on.

 

Change your context to "DS PEDS" and look at the next day's schedule to find the start time (typically between 7-8am). All ophthalmologists in the Pediatric Ophthalmology  Department see adults as well, and you can check schedules ahead of time to find out which person is seeing the most children each day. You can always ask the fellows which attending they recommend for shadowing the next day.

 

Location

All clinics are in the second floor of the Doris Stein Building - Pediatric Ophthalmology and Strabismus Suite. This is the less-fancy looking older building on the right as you cross Westwood walking from 200 Med Plaza. The fancier white/silver building on the left is the Wasserman building. This is  where you would go if you were interested in observing in the OR.

 

Enter the Doris Stein building and take the elevators to the 2nd floor. Follow the signs that say UCLA Pediatric Ophthalmology, which will lead you to open double doors and a couple of receptionists who will tell you which rooms the attending you are shadowing  has today and introduce you to the fellows assigned to that attending.

 

Expectations

You are expected to go to clinic when you are not cross-covering. You will shadow in clinic (even the fellows shadow). With international fellows, rotating ophthalmology residents, optometry  students, and peds ophtho fellows, sometimes there can be 6 shadowing people in a room. The rooms are big (because of the vision testing). Ask questions and speak up if you are interested in doing some of the exams. Dr.  Isenberg especially likes for you to write questions down and discuss them after clinic. There is ample opportunity to repeat the attending exam while he/she is discussing his/her findings with the patient or parents (dilated  fundoscopy or cycloplegic refraction, or estimating the degree of hyper/hypo/eso/exo- tropic). Only a couple people will repeat the exam if there is a big group.

 

You are not expected to write notes. One of the fellows often helps the attending write the note in the room.