Contact lens teaching in an international sample of universities

Undergraduate contact lens (CL) education subjects provide basic background to guarantee eye health in CL wearers that is crucial to avoid CL-related complications and provide better eye-care by best qualified optometrists.

CL training is a very important optometrist skill in most university optometrist training programmes worldwide. The purpose of this study was to assess the teaching time dedicated to CL education in an international sample of 40 universities.

A review of official university websites offering optometry courses was conducted between 2020 and 2022 in English, Spanish, and Portuguese. Only programmes that provided detailed descriptions of the curriculum were included. The number of CL subjects, total CL teaching hours (calculated using online description of subject credits using available conversion and equivalence tables), and entire program teaching time (in hours) were compared according to the country of each university (grouped geographically).

Forty optometry programmes were identified and analysed. North American universities dedicated the most teaching time (3,309 ± 311 hours) with 3.1 ± 1.3 CL subjects, and 188.9 ± 91.8 CL teaching hours (5.7 ± 2.9%), followed by Latin American universities (3,008 ± 307 hours, 2.5 ± 0.8 CL subjects with 141.2 ± 49.4 CL teaching hours, 4.7 ± 1.5%) and Oceanian universities (3,000 hours, 1.5 ± 0.6 CL subjects with 112.5 ± 43.3 CL teaching hours, 3.7 ± 1.4%). European universities showed lower teaching time (2,123 ± 311 hours, 2.1 ± 1.0 subjects with 130.0 ± 49.6 CL teaching hours, 6.0 ± 1.8%). Statistically significant differences in the entire program teaching time (p < 0.01) and CL subjects (p = 0.02) were found; however, CL teaching time (p = 0.43) was not significantly different.

Approximately 5% of total programme time is dedicated to CL teaching in the optometry programmes analysed. These findings could help university administrators and faculty to refine teaching plans and adjust the time allocated to CL practices. New education techniques based on technology and simulators could help improve CL teaching prior to introducing students into clinical environments.