Curriculum

In addition to rotations at the Harkness Eye Institute, Columbia residents spend 3 months in each PGY-year at Harlem Hospital Center, a public, municipally owned teaching hospital affiliated with Columbia University. Harlem Hospital Center provides a tremendous breadth of pathology that fully complements the experience at the Eye Institute. Patients are seen daily in the ambulatory clinic, and surgical procedures including cataracts, glaucoma, cornea, plastics, and strabismus cases are performed on site in state-of-the-art operating rooms. In this rotation, residents are immersed in a diverse patient care environment and can offer superlative medical care to a population in need.

Primary call responsibilities are divided between first year and second year residents, with most primary call taken by the first-year residents. Third year residents provide back-up call and assist in the management of complicated medical and emergency surgical cases. All call is taken from home, although there is an on-call room available to the residents in case they need to stay onsite for an extended period. The residency program is in full compliance with ACGME work-hour regulations.

The adult and pediatric emergency rooms are equipped with slit lamps, and the on-call resident has a full palette of hand-held instruments and lenses to bring to consults, including wireless indirect ophthalmoscopy, portable slit lamp, and portable ultrasound. Adult emergency surgeries are performed at the Eye Institute, and pediatric emergency surgeries take place in the Children’s Hospital.

Medical education is not static, and neither are our learners. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, we have shifted to teleconferencing for lectures, and we have closely re-examined the way we teach. The New York area ophthalmology program directors have come together to develop a core citywide curriculum for education that is based on the AAO BCSC series. This core curriculum features the collective expertise of physicians in New York City and New Jersey with pre-recorded lectures available to residents at all New York area institutions. To interact with these fundamental subspecialty lectures, we have developed a Columbia “Eye-Talks” series that flips the classroom and focuses on case-based discussions with our world-renowned faculty. Our residents’ response to this new educational model has been overwhelmingly positive.  

Each morning via teleconferencing, residents review challenging overnight call cases and inpatient consults with a rotating schedule of our outstanding faculty members. Morning report is a fantastic opportunity for learning and is also a critical part of sign-out and continuity of care.

With Dr. Steve Brooks (aka Tiger Dad) and our dedicated faculty, we have developed a robust surgical curriculum that begins with suturing skills education in July, followed by a suturing olympics obstacle course in the fall. In addition, we have an annual cataract symposium with all anterior segment faculty each summer, and dedicated specialty-specific dry and wet labs that occur throughout the year. Residents practice microscope centration, tissue handling, wound construction, and specific surgical techniques with a combination of virtual simulation, porcine and model eyes. Each first-year resident is paired with a third-year buddy and a faculty mentor to develop fundamental surgical skills before performing the first primary case. Surgical procedures are introduced early in residency training to build skills over a longer period – for example, residents start performing cataract surgery in the first year of training and typically perform 30-50 primary cases by the end of the second year of training.

Since 1941, the Columbia BSCO has been educating attendees from around the world on the fundamentals and cutting-edge topics of vision science. Each January, the first-year residents are excused from clinical activities to attend this fantastic course.  

COACH is our web-based educational system featuring surgical videos, lectures, and presentations by our own distinguished faculty. How does the world’s greatest retinal surgeon, Dr. Stanley Chang, repair a complex retinal detachment? How does President of the World Glaucoma Association, Dr. Jeff Liebmann, perform a trabeculectomy? Our trainees access these resources to be better prepared when it is time to operate with our faculty.

In addition to OKAP review lectures each February and March, our faculty administer Mock Oral examinations annually to better prepare them for the Oral Board examination. Second year residents attend the Wills Eye Review Course each year, and each resident is provided a subscription to an online question bank. Our residents have consistently performed better than the national averages for both the written and oral board examinations.

Upon graduating from the program, our highly skilled residents typically complete ophthalmic subspecialty training at the most prestigious clinical and research fellowships in the country. Many of our graduates have gone on to faculty and leadership positions at top academic institutions, including UCSF, Wills Eye Hospital, Columbia, Wilmer, and UCLA. Others have served as successful leaders of their communities and their private practices.

Our trainees have access to robust instructional resources, including our new surgical wet lab and simulation suite with the HelpMeSee haptic-based eye surgery simulator. Trainees also have access to COACH, our web-based educational system featuring surgical videos, lectures, and presentations by our own distinguished faculty. These resources prepare our trainees for when the time comes to assist or operate alongside our faculty.

Seniors participate in a 1–2-week elective of their choosing to develop interests and experiences that may not occur during the normal scope of training. Recent electives have ranged from global trips to Guatemala, to an elective with an ocular geneticist at another institution, to an elective mini-internship at the Bausch and Lomb Headquarters.

In 2022-2023, the Harkness Eye Institute will begin a new chapter in its storied history. A brand-new Eye Institute will be rebuilt from the ground up to accommodate our expanding department and to anticipate the needs of 21st century cutting-edge care. Most day-to-day operations for the department will be relocated to a new temporary space located on the CUIMC campus and will offer the same state-of-the-art equipment and environment that our faculty, trainees, and patients associate with Columbia. Extensive planning is already underway to assure continuity and minimize disruption across our teaching, research, and patient care enterprises. Rotation experiences at our faculty practice satellite offices and Harlem Hospital will remain unchanged.