A VOYAGE OF DISCOVERY

It is a genuine pleasure to be associated with this month’s issue of EuroTimes which is devoted to the theme of education and training. This is a subject in which I have retained an enduring interest all my professional life and which should interest every ophthalmologist dedicated to delivering better outcomes for our patients.

Education and training are lifelong pursuits. There is still a perception that education and training stop as soon as one leaves medical school, whereas in fact the voyage of discovery is only just beginning. There is always something new to learn – in medicine, in ophthalmology, in life – and we continually need to look afresh at ageold problems. That is the dynamo that underpins scientific enquiry and which drives progress in our rapidly evolving field of medicine.

The ESCRS recognises the importance of education and training for its members – and this is true whether those members are young ophthalmologists or seasoned professionals. As this month’s Cover Story makes clear, the drive to put education and training at the heart of the society is spurring new developments and initiatives to empower our members and put them in control of the learning process. In allowing ESCRS members free access to CME-accredited learning material in a flexible manner to suit their own schedule and pace of learning, iLearn liberates learning from the traditional classroom environment and puts the learner in the driving seat.

This is how it should be. At the European level, we have seen the importance of enhanced cross-border cooperation in education and training for many of our members from eastern Europe. We definitely need to encourage such partnerships and foster greater international cooperation between European medical institutions in order to harmonise training standards across the region. We could also perhaps take this idea further in the future by establishing a PhDMD degree on the European level that would be recognised by all participating countries, with the ESCRS and the European Board of Ophthalmology playing an enabling role in the accreditation process.

Looking at the current standards of training and education in our universities, I think there is definitely a need not to overlook the fundamentals in our rush to embrace the wonders of all the technology we now have at our disposal. With so much “on-screen†technology available, we must never lose sight of the benefits that a thorough grasp of visual optics and a firm grounding in mathematics and physics bring to understanding the wonderful complexity of the human eye.