Week 9

Hello all!

Goals

This week was quite a bit slower than last week, but that allowed me to make good progress on my project. On Monday, I was in Special Testing running the OCT scans and Fundus photos. On Thursday, I was walking patients in and out of their laser surgeries, either YAGs or SLTs. The rest of the week was dedicated to visual fields, which are perfect circumstances to finish obtaining the necessary data. I finished all of the two-year follow up for the patients I am including in the presentation on May 6th. Since I cannot use all the patients in the study for the two-year follow up (the latest surgeries were June 2015), I will use the patients who followed up until today, so about half the total patient population.

More on the data, I revised the surgeries all the patients had. I checked to see if the patients underwent other glaucoma surgeries, such as other SLTs, iStent surgeries for the SLT patients, Xen Gel (a brand new procedure that I barely understand), G6/CPC laser (another procedure that I barely understand), and the like. Cataract surgery could theoretically decrease the pressure, but no patients had a cataract surgery after their glaucoma surgery.

A funny thing about when I do the visual fields is that I always manage to be a little late. Whether I think I am supposed to be doing special testing, or I am caught up trying to learn another technician-specific job, I end up getting to the VFs later than I am supposed to. Luckily, I am doing something productive so it’s not a complete waste of time. Also, patients seem to like me so they do not complain about waiting a little bit once they arrive, VFs being the first test they do.

Enough said.

I focused on learning how to work up a patient this week. It requires six steps, give or take. First, I ask them about their medical history and if there have been any recent hospitalizations or anything like that (they usually say no thankfully). Then, I make sure they are not allergic to our medications, because that would be bad. Following that, I test their vision with and without glasses, so they read letters projected in front of them. I then give them a little card with a grid and a black dot in the center. The patient looks at the black dot and they tell me if the grid lines are straight or wavy/crooked. After that, I do what is called a confrontation, which is where they tell me how many fingers I am holding up using their peripheral vision. The next two steps require a light, so I grab a handheld flashlight basically, and use it to test their eye movement by having them follow my finger. It’s basically an ET moment because my finger is lit up form the flashlight. Lastly, I check their pupils to make sure they are contracting properly when exposed to light.

Thanks for reading and see you guys next week!