Ophthalmology teaching in medical schools: a survey in the UK

With expanding medical knowledge, there is increasing competition for space within the medical school curriculum. In the USA there is evidence of erosion of ophthalmic teaching within medical undergraduate teaching,1 2 and the same may be true in the UK. In response to such concerns, the International Council of Ophthalmologists (ICO) called on all medical schools to establish ophthalmology teaching as part of their core medical curriculum, and subsequently published guidelines for such a curriculum.3 In this study we used a postal questionnaire, which has been previously used in Australasian medical schools, to assess the extent to which these guidelines were adhered to in the UK.4 Thirty-two medical schools in …