Speaker: Reena Patel, O.D., Co-Chair, AOA Pediatric Eye Health and Vision Access Committee
Reena Patel, O.D.: Hello, I'm Dr. Reena Patel, and I'm co-chair of the AOA's Pediatric Eye Health and Vision Access Committee. I am very excited for this webinar on prescribing for pediatric patients, and I encourage folks to attend because they're going to learn a lot of information on this topic. I work with optometry interns, and a question that I get very commonly with them in clinic is when it comes to prescribing for young children. And I recognize where these questions are coming from, because prescribing for pediatric patients is unique. It's not quite the same as prescribing for the adult population. In that case, oftentimes, we'll do vision, we'll do a manifest refraction, and we'll oftentimes come up with their prescription based on those findings. But for pediatric patients, it's often quite different. There's a lot of other factors we need to take into consideration. For example, the patient's age, the type of refractive error, any symptoms they may be experiencing, or maybe lack of symptoms. How about their accommodation? How's their binocularity? So, all those different, components come into play, and this webinar is going to touch upon all of those different considerations that we do need to think about when it comes to prescribing for pediatric patients. And at the end of the course, attendees will feel much more confident on this topic.
