Page 20 - ASCO Annual Report 2019
P. 20

 ADVANCING OPTOMETRIC EDUCATION
One Volunteer At A Time
The Board of Directors, faculty and administrators at our 23 schools and colleges of optometry are dedicated to academic excellence.
They all play a vital role in shaping the Doctors of Optometry of tomorrow.
Special Interest Groups
Special Interest Groups (SIGs) allow ASCO to implement its mission of “fulfilling the leadership role in the optometric education enterprise” and to address the Association’s strategic objectives of enhancing faculty development and involvement. Our 18 SIGs provide forums for professional staff, administrators and faculty with common responsibilities to communicate directly with each other about issues related to their areas of interest and expertise.
• New in 2019 was the formation of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion SIG, founded to promote the knowledge, understanding, and principles of diversity and cultural competence in schools and colleges of optometry.
• The Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice SIG was also formed in 2019 with the mission to foster interprofessionalism and collaborative practice within optometric education. The group
will work collaboratively with the IPECP Committee on maintaining an active database of exemplar projects and mentoring champions at member insti- tutions through development of interprofessional programming.
Committees
• ASCO’s standing and ad hoc committees develop policy and guidance on a variety of issues that support the Association’s strategic objectives in academic affairs, clinical affairs, residency education, student affairs, government policy and other areas. The Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice Committee completed A Guide to Effective Interprofessional Education and Collaborative Practice Experiences in Optometric Education. This tool kit is a valuable resource for optometric institutions, and as an open-access living document, it will allow member
schools and faculty members to continue to expand and improve optometric education.
• ASCO’s liaison to the Interprofessionalism Professionalism Collaborative (IPC), Dr. John Nishimoto of Southern California College of Optometry at Marshall B. Ketchum University, is coauthor of the article, “The Intersection of Professionalism and Interprofessional Care: Development and Initial Testing of the Interprofessional Professionalism Assessment,” which describes the IPC’s development of an assessment instrument allowing professionalism and collaboration behaviors of health care professionals-in-training to
be measured. ASCO is proud to support optometry’s participation in this collaborative effort.
• The IPECP Committee secured funding from Johnson & Johnson to enhance ASCO’s video about interprofes- sional education. Johnson & Johnson’s support allows ASCO to continue producing quality products about this important topic.
• Subcommittees and Sub-groups of the ASCO/AAO Task Force on Subspecialization finalized the param- eters/guidelines for the recognition of a subspe- cialty in optometry and tackled the re-evaluation of residency titles and alignment with AAO sections/ Diplomate programs, with an initial focus on ocular disease.
• This year’s Clinical Affairs Committee’s Online Clinical Educators Forum offered an academic research primer, in coordination with the Academic Research Committee, a segment on teaching and learning focused on clinical remediation, and several clinical update segments -- pediatrics vision therapy, dry eye, ocular pharmacology, and new technology: electrodi- agnostic testing.
Support from our Corporate Contributors enables ASCO and its committees and SIGs to offer a greater quality and quantity of educational experiences for faculty and administrators. ASCO thanks all Corporate Contributors for their support. See page 25.
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