Clinical Education

The Kentucky College of Optometry will be the principal training environment of the students and residents of the college. The facilities will be conveniently located to students and residents. At the same time, it will be distributed over a wide geographic area of rural Eastern Kentucky in a fashion that provides outreach to families and patients most in need of specialty eye care services. In fulfilling this need, the Kentucky College of Optometry is taking advantage of strategic partnerships with medical care organizations that currently provide critical services at clinical facilities to residents in Eastern Kentucky. Eye care services will also be offered on the campus of the Kentucky College of Optometry. The on-campus clinic will consist of primary care clinics serving patients and families lacking access to care, as well as certain specialty services which may not be available elsewhere and are needed to support critical educational objectives.

Primary Care Services

Primary care vision services are located on KYCO’s campus. Accessible services are provided for patients who do not have the resources or means to obtain eye care elsewhere. Eight fully-equipped clinic rooms will be set aside for these services. This will be the main on-campus teaching clinic.

Primary care services will also be located at each of the partner clinical sites in our region. Primary care services will include an appropriate mix of adult primary eye and vision care, pediatric and infant eye care services, contact lens services, eye disease services and low vision services, which are appropriate within a family medicine environment.

Specialty Eye Care Services

In addition, patients who require more specialized care involving advanced pediatric, strabismus/amblyopia, disease, specialty contact lenses and low vision care will be managed on a referral basis at one or more specialized clinics at the Kentucky College of Optometry and/or one or more of the outreach clinics. The intent of this specialty care approach is to conveniently serve patients with minimum travel while maintaining the highest level of specialty care possible. This approach will also enable improved clinical education in specialty care areas by allowing the concentration of specialty care expertise and capability that will ensure adequate training exposure to caseloads of these less common but equally important case types.