Residency Program

The department currently provides a three-year postgraduate training program for 21 residents, with six or seven new candidates accepted each year. Residents benefit from the wisdom of a large, expert faculty with a deep commitment to teaching, and they have the opportunity to work with the latest diagnostic and therapeutic equipment. The organized teaching program consists of approximately 350 hours of didactic lectures per residency, covering all subspecialty areas within ophthalmology. One afternoon a week residents leave the clinic areas and report to Downstate for an afternoon of grand rounds case presentations followed by didactics. Special program features include a four-week annual basic science course at Columbia Presbyterian for second-year residents. In addition, all residents attend a weekly, three-hour cooperative course collaboratively sponsored by several major New York City-based residency training programs. The SUNY Downstate program offers outstanding training in surgery, with work including microsurgical laboratories, strabismus, and laser surgery in the first year; cataract surgery, pterygium removal, glaucoma surgery, vitrectomy, retinal repair, and extracapsular cataract techniques in the second year. The senior year’s surgery training includes work to supplement previously given courses. All residents exceed the minimum surgical requirements set by the Accreditation Commission for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). It is expected that the senior residents will all perform more than 120 cataract cases. A comparable experience is gained in ocular trauma, glaucoma surgery, retinal surgery and laser surgery.

The program includes monthly faculty grand rounds, often with visiting professors, updating residents and faculty on developing trends and techniques in ophthalmology, in addition to the weekly resident grand rounds. As mentioned, all residents execute a research project, and mentorships are established in the first year of residency training. Other special program features include an oncology rotation at Cornell University and the opportunity to experience ophthalmic surgery at ambulatory surgical centers.

Particularly popular with residents is the surgical course, with outstanding practice opportunities under expert faculty guidance. Strengths of the overall residency program, they say, include the extensive exposure to trauma cases it provides, and its well-structured, three-month rotations through programs at the five affiliated hospitals in the first year. This gets residents off to a positive start through experience with a variety of patients and pathologies. Another outstanding aspect of the SUNY Downstate education program, according to residents and fellows, is the opportunity it affords them to work and learn in state-of-the-art facilities, where the most sophisticated equipment permits conducting the most advanced procedures. They also praise the dynamism of the faculty and the program’s emphasis on research accomplishment.

Approximately 96 percent of the program’s graduate residents pass their boards on the first attempt, and all who have sought fellowships have obtained them. Many now are in fellowship training at some of the most prestigious institutions in the country, while graduates who have decided to remain in Brooklyn to practice are discovering a vast, barely tapped market for professional eye care. Since 1996, there has been a marked increase in the quality of applicants for residency program openings, apparently attracted by the department’s growing reputation. At its most recent review by the ACGME in 2000, the department received a full four-year accreditation.