Overview of Residency Program in Ophthalmology

The Residency in Ophthalmology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine is a three-year clinical and basic science training program that is fully accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. The residency offers three residency positions yearly for a total of nine residents in the program at any one time. These positions are open to graduates of accredited medical colleges who have completed at least one year of postgraduate medical training. Residents enter the program as PGY-2 trainees.

The Residency training takes place in four major sites on the University of Cincinnati Medical Center campus. The University Hospital site includes the Mary Knight Asbury Residents Eye Clinic, the emergency room, operating rooms, and inpatient rooms of the hospital proper, the adjacent Holmes Hospital where most of the resident cataract surgery is performed, and the Medical Arts Building where most of the faculty patient care offices are located. The Residents' Eye Clinic at University Hospital is currently located in the hospital's A Pavilion, but a new Residents Eye Clinic at the Hoxworth Center is scheduled for completion by or before December, 2006.  The Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Hospital site includes a recently expanded Residents' Clinic and the operating rooms and inpatient rooms of the hospital proper. The Children's Hospital Medical Center site includes the recently constructed Abrahamson Pediatric Eye Institute clinical office suite and the emergency room, operating rooms, and inpatient rooms of the hospital proper. The Health Professions Building houses the administrative offices of the Department and the principal lecture room for resident teaching conferences.

The didactic portion of the training program includes a comprehensive series of basic and clinical science lectures on Wednesday afternoons, a weekly neuroophthalmology conference, and Grand Rounds sessions, quarterly ophthalmic tumor board conferences, an Annual Ophthalmological Conference and Research Symposium in the winter, and an annual Spring Ophthalmology Symposium. There is also a regular series of Visiting Professorships, in which invited guest speakers lecture to the residents in the afternoon and to both the residents and community ophthalmologists in the evening at Cincinnati Ophthalmological Society meetings. Incoming first year residents also participate in an introductory course in Ophthalmology during July each year.

The clinical training program includes both supervised outpatient evaluations and treatments and a progressive experience with ophthalmic surgery over the three years. Most of the first year is spent mastering clinical examination techniques and learning basic ophthalmic surgical techniques and procedures. During the second year, the residents get most of their subspecialty experience and perform a number of intraocular surgical cases as the surgeon of record. The bulk of their intraocular surgical experience comes during the third year in the course of their rotations at the University Hospital and Cincinnati Veterans Affairs Hospital. Second and third year rotations at the Children's Hospital Medical Center provide extensive experience in strabismus surgery and pediatric ophthalmology as well.

Starting in the first year of training, residents are encouraged to participate in the writing of case reports and in the design of one or more basic or clinical research studies. During the residency, each resident is expected to complete at least one clinical or basic science research study in ophthalmology, compose and revise a manuscript based on that work, make a formal presentation of their research work and findings to the faculty at the annual Clinical Conference and Research Symposium, and submit that work to a peer-reviewed ophthalmic journal for possible publication.

Qualified individuals are invited to apply for a residency position at the University of Cincinnati Department of Ophthalmology through the Central Application Service of the Ophthalmology Matching Program. All completed applications are reviewed in detail by members of the Resident Selection Committee, which determines which of the applicants will be invited for interview. Interviews are typically held in November and December.