Kurs „OPSIS Advancing Lives Through Vision” ENG
Wersja PL 
Our mission is to make the benefits of a comprehensive understanding of the visual process broadly available to change lives.
A comprehensive approach to optometric care considers the whole patient and the benefits of prevention, protection, remediation and enhancement of the visual process. Vision is a holistic process involving both the whole individual and the environment in which the individual functions.
OUR APPROACH
Our approach to optometric care considers the whole patient and the benefits of prevention, protection, remediation and enhancement of the visual process. Vision is a holistic process involving both the whole individual and the environment in which the individual functions. The everyday experience of vision is the product of all of the following:
• Months of visual development before birth, and a lifetime of continuing visual development, serve to connect motor control of eyes, hands, and body.
• Visual-motor control and eye movements map out the visual space world that allows the body to be used as a referential base for posture, orientation, localization and understanding relationships.
• The person uses their brain and eyes to sample, transform, and process information in the available light.
• This product is distributed and stored throughout the brain and is integrated with reconstructed prior visual experiences to guide future actions.
• Vision emerges from the integrated information generated by the brain and body, and the visual-motor and other sensorimotor processes, to derive meaning and direct movement.
The optometrist interested in this approach observes the patients’ responses to the demands of daily activities and how they respond to changes produced by lenses. Because lenses affect perception, posture, orientation and localization, these observations provide the optometrist with unique insight into the patients’ behavior.
The optometrist uses lenses during the examination to probe overall performance while answering the following questions:
• What is the current visual status?
• How did the current visual status develop?
• How well can the patient meet present and future demands?
• What potential exists to prevent visual dysfunctions, protect visual abilities and promote improved and enhanced performance?
Visual acuity, distance and near, is only one aspect of prescriptive care. The visual process is active, dynamic, evolving and plastic. Vision emerges from the integration and utilization of information that is learned and modified by experience. The visual process is holistic, treatment regimens use lenses, visual hygiene, and visual therapy emphasizing the whole person to promote the prevention of visual problems and improve visual aspects of performance. The optometrist establishes an environment allowing the patient to see more, observe more, experience more, learn more and become more efficient.
The OPSIS course, Advancing Lives Through Vision, is a comprehensive exploration of optometric practice composed of 180 hours of clinical experience and instruction organized into six 4-day sections spread out over time.
The course is open to optometrists and others licensed to provide visual care, including the prescribing of lenses and the provision of visual therapy (VT). It is also open to visual therapists who are under the direct supervision of an optometrist or equivalent.
The primary goal of the course is to provide a reliable working basis for the application of the behavioral philosophy of vision care as described by A. M. Skeffington in Functional Optometric Philosophy . The course includes the applicable biology, physiology, and neurology of the visual process, optometric examination and case analysis, lens prescribing to guide visual development, and a curriculum of VT including instruction in each of the approximately 50 VT techniques that comprise the VT curriculum. The ultimate goal is to provide the ability to help each patient meet their personal visual potential through the development of visual skill and the use of the best available lenses.
This course is designed so that an optometrist or therapist will be able to apply the knowledge available in the course in such a manner as to be able to offer successful VT, including designing appropriate glasses or contact lenses for their patients. The course is of sufficient sophistication so that even the most experienced optometrist will be expected to gain insight and expertise that will add to an already successful practice.
This course is unique because it is case based: The course uses both real life and example cases and practical exercises that designed to highlight elements of analysis and treatment, to demonstrate outcomes from offices practicing according to this philosophy of optometry. Cases will include patients who struggle to read or learn and those who exhibit strabismus, amblyopia, head injury, or developmental delay.
An important feature of this course is the idea that the optometrist who is practicing from this perspective is not only providing an examination seeking to discover poor or inadequate health or visual status but is also actively looking for lenses and VT that will enhance the life of every patient. We are not focused on what is wrong or inadequate, but are seeking to help each person obtain the best possible lenses and to develop their visual skill to best support their lives as individuals.
For example, a patient need not have a formally diagnosed reading problem to become a better reader through the development of improved visual skill. Using the appropriate lenses not only enhances performance at near allowing for increased productivity but protects patients from the development of adaptive visual conditions such as myopia, astigmia, or convergence insufficiency.
To accomplish the goals above, our principal instructors must meet the following qualifications: They must be experienced speakers, and be currently providing successful optometric care, including VT, in a private office, or have had significant multi-year experience doing so. The course is not only based on solid visual science, but also on successful practice applying optometry as taught in the course. The curriculum of visual therapy presented in the course is drawn from many years of successful patient outcomes in the offices where our instructors have practiced.
We expect that when an optometrist applies the knowledge gained in this course, they will be helping their patients by prescribing more glasses and contact lenses than before. We also expect that many attendees will add significantly more VT patients to their practice by the end of the course, far in excess of the actual investment in the course.
[1] Reinventing Optometry.com https://static1.squarespace.com/static/61280d615beb94482a930438/t/625c78f688ac262692ad5478/1650227446695/Skeffington+Behavioral+Optometric+Philosophy.pdf
Speakers:
Paul A. Haris
Fee:
The course is for optometrists and ophthalmologists
Training dates:
Part 1: September 26 - 29, 2024
Part 2: October 3-6, 2024
Part 3, 4, 5 and 6: the date will be agreed together with the course participants during the 1st meeting
Hours:
Thursday 10:00-18:00
Friday 09:00-17:00
Saturday 09:00-17:00
Sunday 09:00-15:00
REGISTRATION FORM
LOCATION:
Alcon Training Center
Marynarska 15, 02-674 Warszawa
