EDUCATION PROGRAMS
	Residency Program Fellowship Program Continuing Medical Education Program

Residency Program
The department currently provides a three-year postgraduate training program for 21 residents, with six or seven new candidates accepted each year. Residents benefit from the wisdom of a large, expert faculty with a deep commitment to teaching, and they have the opportunity to work with the latest diagnostic and therapeutic equipment. The organized teaching program consists of approximately 350 hours of didactic lectures per residency, covering all subspecialty areas within ophthalmology. One afternoon a week residents leave the clinic areas and report to Downstate for an afternoon of grand rounds case presentations followed by didactics. Special program features include a four-week annual basic science course at Columbia Presbyterian for second-year residents. In addition, all residents attend a weekly, three-hour cooperative course collaboratively sponsored by several major New York City-based residency training programs. The SUNY Downstate program offers outstanding training in surgery, with work including microsurgical laboratories, strabismus, and laser surgery in the first year; cataract surgery, pterygium removal, glaucoma surgery, vitrectomy, retinal repair, and extracapsular cataract techniques in the second year. The senior year’s surgery training includes work to supplement previously given courses. All residents exceed the minimum surgical requirements set by the Accreditation Commission for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). It is expected that the senior residents will all perform more than 120 cataract cases. A comparable experience is gained in ocular trauma, glaucoma surgery, retinal surgery and laser surgery.

The program includes monthly faculty grand rounds, often with visiting professors, updating residents and faculty on developing trends and techniques in ophthalmology, in addition to the weekly resident grand rounds. As mentioned, all residents execute a research project, and mentorships are established in the first year of residency training. Other special program features include an oncology rotation at Cornell University and the opportunity to experience ophthalmic surgery at ambulatory surgical centers.

Particularly popular with residents is the surgical course, with outstanding practice opportunities under expert faculty guidance. Strengths of the overall residency program, they say, include the extensive exposure to trauma cases it provides, and its well-structured, three-month rotations through programs at the five affiliated hospitals in the first year. This gets residents off to a positive start through experience with a variety of patients and pathologies. Another outstanding aspect of the SUNY Downstate education program, according to residents and fellows, is the opportunity it affords them to work and learn in state-of-the-art facilities, where the most sophisticated equipment permits conducting the most advanced procedures. They also praise the dynamism of the faculty and the program’s emphasis on research accomplishment.
Approximately 96 percent of the program’s graduate residents pass their boards on the first attempt, and all who have sought fellowships have obtained them. Many now are in fellowship training at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, while graduates who have decided to remain in Brooklyn to practice are discovering a vast, barely tapped market for professional eye care. Since 1996, there has been a marked increase in the quality of applicants for residency program openings, apparently attracted by the department’s growing reputation. At its most recent review by the ACGME in 2000, the department received a full four-year accreditation.






Fellowship Program
The Ophthalmology Department has offered a fellowship training program in neuro-ophthalmology since 1971. It was one of the earliest fellowship programs established at Downstate, and it remains one of only four fellowships offered in Neuro-ophthalmology in New York City. Currently the neuro-ophthalmology fellowship program has one fellow, based primarily at the department’s Kingsbrook Medical Center affiliate, where training and supervision is provided under the leadership of Arthur Wolintz, MD, fellowship trained in both general and neuro-ophthalmology. Dr. Wolintz, a former chairman of Ophthalmology at SUNY Downstate (1983-1996) is a distinguished teaching professor and director of the Neuro-ophthalmology Division at Kingsbrook Jewish Medical Center. Patients at Kingsbrook cared for by the neuro-ophthalmology fellow and three attending physicians represent a wide range of acute and chronic neurological disorders with ocular manifestations. Many patients are older, presenting a variety of age-related neurological problems and dementia, but pediatric cases also are well represented. Kingsbrook receives referrals from hospitals and medical schools throughout the New York metropolitan area for evaluation of neuro-ophthalmologic problems of brain-injured children, and children are also referred by the Board of Education for evaluation of learning disorders.

In addition, Kingsbrook has a brain trauma center offering fellows outstanding opportunities for learning and practice. The fellow participates in daily care of inpatients and conducts four weekly clinics at Kingsbrook, with 30 to 35 patients per session, in conjunction with attendings. The fellow also participates with Dr. Wolintz in neuro-ophthalmologic consults and resident and medical student teaching and supervision at other SUNY Ophthalmology Department affiliates. Outreach, including a weekly diabetes interdisciplinary program, is another component the neuro-ophthalmology fellowship training program. The neuro-ophthalmology program’s graduates achieve expertise in diagnosis and management of patients with a wide range of conditions, including optic nerve disease, cranial neuropathologies, neurovascular problems, neuromuscular dysfunction, intracranial and orbital tumors, and disorders of visual perception. Most have gone on to lead distinguished careers at top institutions throughout the U.S.






Continuing Medical Education
The Department of Ophthalmology, along with the Office of Continuing Medical Education at SUNY Downstate, is committed to providing timely educational courses for practicing physicians. Courses are directed toward the practical aspects of ophthalmic practice, but are, in addition, designed to convey an understanding of the basic scientific concepts underlying sound clinical practice. CME events include two annual Ophthalmic Symposia to update the ophthalmic community on new developments. Recent symposia topics have included: "The Human Genome in Ophthalmic Disease"; "The Glaucomas: Controversy and Considerations"; "Advanced Phacoemulsification"; and "PRK and LASIK."

In addition, the department holds joint meetings annually with two other Brooklyn organizations, the Brooklyn Ophthalmology Society and the Kings County Ophthalmology Alumni Association. The most recent combined meeting was on Retina and Glaucoma held in January 2004. This was the most attended meeting thus far with participants coming from all over the tri-state area. In mid-1999, the department hosted a highly successful international session in Rome and Sorrento, Italy entitled "Current Concepts in Ophthalmology for the Clinical Ophthalmologist," including distinguished guest faculty from the School of Medicine of Udine, Italy, the University of Rome Medical School, and the Bietti Foundation of Rome. The conference’s 40 attendees earned 17-1/2 hours of Continuing Medical Education Credit. Included among faculty was Richard C. Troutman, SUNY Downstate’s Ophthalmology chairman from 1971 to 1983. Commenting on the session, Dr. Troutman noted that he was extremely impressed by the quality, dynamism and dedication of the department’s current faculty, who brought to mind the spirit of the division in the early years, when its physicians were achieving important breakthroughs in ophthalmology.

In 2001, the international meeting was held in Paris and Monte Carlo in association with the ophthalmatic faculty from Paris. In 2003, the meeting was held in South Africa with tremendous attendance from distinguished faculty from all over the world in conjunction with South African faculty.

The 2005 meeting will be in Spain with collaboration from the Barraquer Institute in Barcelona. After Dr. Joaquin Barraquer attended our January 2003 meeting as special guest, our departments have been jointly working on the upcoming meeting.