Continuing Practitioner Education

As the contact lens market continues to expand, it is important that continuing education is available for practitioners as well as educators. Working together with both local and global industry, IACLE has developed continuing education programs tailored to the needs and skills of the region or country. In order to expand this program, we are developing those educators that have attained FIACLE status to become involved in conducting local continuing education programs. The FIACLE Leadership Program forms a resource team to support contact lens education at the local or regional level.

Introduction and Background

IACLE's mandate for more than a decade has been to "educate the educator". However, several years ago IACLE began using our contact lens education expertise to develop and present practitioner continuing education, an idea originally suggested by one of our Industry sponsors. The first program was held in 1999 and since that time IACLE has reached more than 2000 practitioners worldwide in locations such as Mexico City, New Delhi, Shanghai and Taipei. In 2003, all seven IACLE sponsors joined together to support a practitioner continuing education program in Budapest Hungary for 250 practitioners.

IACLE has reviewed our policy for developing and presenting practitioner education programs and have established a three-tier approach that offers a variety of options. The varying programs/options are described in the accompanying table.

Practitioner education programs do not fall within IACLE's primary mandate, and as such all corporate support of IACLE must be allocated to educator resources and training. Therefore, for those practitioner programs that IACLE is involved in, full cost recovery through special educational grants must be achieved.

As well, IACLE is also capable of working with an industry sponsor to develop technical materials that may be of use in training programs. These may include written materials and CD/DVD self-training resources.

If there is further interest in organizing a practitioner education program and as well, developing educational support materials, or there are questions or comments, you may direct them to Pamela Capaldi, IACLE Special Projects Officer.

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