Simulation in Ophthalmic Training

Vision impairment and blindness arise both as a cause, and a consequence, of poverty. Achievement of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals in providing universal access and equity in eye care, both within and between among countries, remains challenging. A severe shortage of eye care providers is creating unnecessary blindness and vision impairment in developing communities worldwide. Education and training develops and strengthens the capacity of emerging nations to contribute to global eye health and the World Health Organization Development Goals in an effective and sustainable way. Although relative to other medical professions, adoption of simulation in ophthalmic training has been relatively slow, simulation potentially offers reduced training costs, increased accessibility, objective measurement of training outcomes, and improvements in patient safety during and after clinician training, all of which can help address the global burden of vision impairment and blindness. Simulation training offers advantages over apprenticeship models, the traditional mode of transferring knowledge and skills in medicine and health, which suffers from imperfect transference due to inherent biases, heuristic and idiosyncratic expectations of experts, and subjective measures of outcomes. Simulation does not completely do away with these confounders because it is made to fit into established curricula, making it difficult to measure effectiveness of the simulation in isolation. The power of simulation training for resource-limited regions and countries is immense in offering cost-effective training in-country; however, it is important that any such tools are developed within the context of the limitations in situ.