Objectives: To build on OPTM3111 and to advance students knowledge and stimulate interest in primary care optometry, dispensing and paediatrics. To produce a student with good professional attitude, good communication skills and a desire to continue learning, who has the ability to integrate scientific and clinical aspects of optometry and make well-reasoned decisions while undertaking general patient care under supervision of a registered optometrist at the UNSW Optometry Clinic. One focus of this course is to advance student knowledge and technical skills in the integration of four key domains of primary care, namely refraction, binocular vision, oculo-visual assessment and dispensing, particularly regarding use of a problem-based approach to optometric consultations in a clinic environment. The other focus is the field of paediatrics. Both strands will involve lectures, tutorials, practical classes and self-directed learning.

Brief Curriculum: Primary care: clinical; laboratories that practice clinical skills in the assessment of normal subjects; case analysis; working in consulting rooms; lens products, tints and coatings, meeting vocational and avoactional patient needs in dispensing, frame selection and limitations, glazing, delivery and adjustment of spectacles; optical considerations of the subsidiary effects of spectacle lenses. Children’s vision; history taking, the development of the child and vision; Vision therapy: vision and posture, behavioural optometry, learning difficulties, special needs, child abuse.