General News
Optometry
Faculty and Staff News
In their fourth and final year, Doctor of Optometry scholars students in the Pennsylvania College of Optometry (PCO) at Drexel University’s Elkins Park campus complete four external clinical rotations at sites across the U.S. and around the world. Building on their comprehensive didactic curriculum and early and extensive clinical education they received at The Eye Institute (TEI), students are prepared to become exceptional clinicians with outstanding knowledge, deep compassion, and a passion for delivering high-quality patient care.
During their externship rotations, they serve as student doctors under the supervision of esteemed clinical preceptors, gaining diverse, hands-on experience in a wide range of practice settings. These preceptors work closely with students and evaluate them across multiple different competency areas. PCO is proud to produce both traditional and scholars students who are qualified, clinically advanced doctors that are highly regarded among their external clinical preceptors.
“As the externship director at a national organization and a preceptor overseeing students from six different colleges of optometry, I can confidently attest that students from the Pennsylvania College of Optometry are consistently among the most well-prepared individuals we have the pleasure of working with,” said Osama Said, OD ‘99, clinical preceptor and optometrist at MyEyeDr in Raleigh, North Carolina.
“Clinically, these students are exceptionally strong, particularly in the area of ocular disease,” and their “solid foundation in clinical skills is evident from day one,” he said.
PCO has a longstanding legacy of exceptional clinical education due to its early clinical exposure and challenging and diverse patient cases seen at our teaching facility, The Eye Institute (TEI).
Dr. Said added that PCO students are among the most engaged with extra-clinical learning opportunities.
“They take great initiative in their own learning and actively participate in our monthly grand rounds sessions,” he said. “This active engagement is most likely due to the additional confidence they gain from their comprehensive education and training, which significantly enriches our case discussions and collaborative learning.”
Dr. Said called it “a privilege” to work with such dedicated and skilled students, and he offered his thanks to PCO’s clinical and didactic faculty for “the outstanding work [they] do to prepare these students.”
Among the clinical preceptors that mentor and mold PCO’s student doctors during their externship rotations is Michael Deitz, OD ‘80, of Ocean Eye Institute in Toms River, New Jersey. Ocean Eye Institute, with three optometrists and seven ophthalmologists, has been an externship rotation site for PCO for 20 years.
“We have been totally impressed with the clinical skillset that these students possess, but more importantly, with their professionalism and abilities to interact with both patients and staff on a daily basis,” said Dr. Deitz. “There is not a day that goes by that I don’t hear patients complimenting the students on how thorough and cordial their examinations were.”
Dr. Deitz added that being a clinical preceptor for PCO “is and will continue to be both a learning and quite enjoyable chapter of [his] optometric career.”
PCO continues to produce the highest quality of clinicians, and prides itself on the feedback it receives from external clinical sites.
For more information regarding the Doctor of Optometry program and the clinical experience, visit the website.
