Tijuana Mexico Thanksgiving Week 2007
During the 2007 Thanksgiving week Dr. Barry Leonard lead a VOSH trip in Tijuana. This year was the first year that a joint VOSH trip between the SCCO and Tijuana optomitry students was conducted. Over the week they examined 1000 patients! Read more about this trip from several of the SCCO students below.
Emily Freeman SCCO, Class of 2010
My experience on the SVOSH trip to Tijuana, Mexico this November was truly amazing. I went with a group of six other optometry students from SCCO, two optometrists, and an optician. A church in Tijuana graciously allowed us to conduct our vision screenings in their buildings and also provided us with breakfast and lunch during our two days of work. At the church, we worked with a few optometrists practicing and teaching in Mexico and several optometry students attending the school in Tijuana. As a group, we were able to perform vision screenings on about 1,000 needy people over the two days. Among those we saw, we wrote glasses prescriptions for several hundred people; lenses are currently being made and the finished glasses will be given to each person in a few weeks time. We also used diagnostic tools to assess the status of various ocular diseases in a great number of the people we saw. Personally, I spent the majority of time doing trial frame refractions and writing glasses prescriptions. In doing this, I was able to practice an important optometric skill and also see very directly what a great impact our services and the glasses we were prescribing had on the people. Overall, this trip was an amazing tool in my optometric clinical education, a great way to practice Spanish, and most importantly by far, a means to truly help a group of people in a meaningful way.
Glenda Berman, SCCO Class 2011
I feel very fortunate to have been a part of the VOSH 2007 Tijuana trip. I have never been on a volunteer vision care trip or to Tijuana and had an absolutely unforgettable experience. As a group we saw approximately 1,000 patients in 2 days! As a first year optometry student I had received some classroom knowledge of optometry; however, I had not had any hands on experience working with patients.
The VOSH trip gave me the opportunity to acquire skills I would not have normally learned until my second or third year in optometry school. I started the trip without having practiced any optometry skills besides visual acuity testing, and not knowing how to speak Spanish. I believe that in the short two days I was in Tijuana my optometry skill range and Spanish language knowledge increased tenfold. The friendly atmosphere of helpful and encouraging doctors gave me the confidence and motivation I needed to succeed. Furthermore, the patients were so grateful and warm, it not only made me feel lucky to be able to help them, but excited for my future profession.
Despite the fact that we saw so many patients and there was a language barrier, I felt a true connection with the people I met and aided. I remember one situation where a patient was so moved by our helping her that she gave me a hug and kiss after I gave her a series of vision tests. Prior to the trip I was interested in working with underprivileged communities. Now, after seeing the lack of eye care for the patients in Tijuana I am even more determined to put my thoughts into action. The VOSH trip emphasized the need for health care in underprivileged communities and I left Tijuana with a renewed sense of passion and desire to serve those less fortunate in my community.
I saw a broad range of patients, many of which I would not necessarily have seen in the population near where I live. For example, I saw adults and kids who had extremely strong myopias but had never received proper vision care and could not afford glasses. In seeing how grateful the patients were, and how much they needed our help, I felt honored to be able to provide them with various services that would not have been possible without the generous donations and support of the Rotary Club and various doctors.
I would recommend the VOSH trip to anyone. Not only did I leave feeling happy to have helped so many people and to have made many new friends, but I have made wonderful memories that will last me a lifetime.
Trung Tran, Class of 2011
If someone were to have told me that it would be possible to see roughly a thousand patients in the span of two days, I probably would have laughed it off as impossible. But that was prior to the V.O.S.H. trip to Tijuana, Mexico during my Thanksgiving break from Southern California College of Optometry this year. The fact of the matter is that in those two days that we volunteered our time and services to the small church a short van ride across the southern border, nearly a thousand people did receive optometric attention. The large number of people that entered the church doors visually impaired left that same day refracted and/or diagnosed and made aware that they had some sort of ocular condition. The fact that our team was only comprised of a couple optometrists and seven optometric students was more impressive in my mind.
Setting up our equipment and supplies the first day we arrived on site, I felt a sense of excitement and anticipation for what was to come. Although we were not that far from everything we have come to be comfortable with in California, it almost seemed like a different world. From the appearance of buildings to the Spanish being spoken and written everywhere, it was hard to ignore the fact that we were in a different country. A huge comfort came from the fact that our very first meal (and every one thereafter) displayed the finest Mexican cuisine I have grown accustomed to having living in Southern California.
After a restful night’s sleep in nearby Rosarito by the beach, I was fully charged and ready to do whatever possible to be helpful. Divvying up responsibilities and tasks amongst ourselves, I started off on the frontlines being the patients’ first encounter as I assessed visual acuities. The Spanish language skills I had acquired made the whole process much easier and made me thankful for the year that I had spent in Spain studying abroad. Visual acuity measurement was only the beginning however as our international team of American and Mexican optometric students and doctors was organized into different rooms. Autorefractors, trial lenses, direct ophthalmoscopes, BIOs, and retinoscopes were all kept busy before patients were sent to our makeshift “optical shop” to have eyeglass orders made, if needed. Although the whole process was designed to be quick and as efficient as possible, we still had a great chance to learn as opportunities arose. Being a first-year student, I was more than happy to take up the chance to learn how to use the handheld slit lamp to observe a dense cataract. And if I had been a third-year student, I would have been lucky enough to see a severe case of retinal detachment first-hand.
Two days and hundreds of patients later, we reached the end of our time in Tijuana. Needless to say, the sense of accomplishment and gratification that came with “bringing the world into focus” was phenomenal, especially with severe cases of never-before-treated nearsightedness. That, along with the opportunity to explore another culture and its people while we were there, fosters a desire within me to pursue other future V.O.S.H. trips and do what I can to help out.
Ngoc Trinh
In the two days that we were there, we examined approximately 1000 people. The screening consisted of a brief case history, visual acuities, trial frame refractions and direct ophthalmoscopy. For those who showed any serious eye health conditions, they were also dilated to further investigate the health of their eyes.
My main task began in the trial frame refraction room. I worked along side both students from the Southern California College of Optometry as well as optometry students from Mexico. We would place the prescriptions that were found on the auto refractor into trial frames. The trial frames were then placed onto the patient where their visual acuities would then be taken with the new correction. If the correction did not show enough of an improvement, many other steps would be taken to modify the prescription to best fit the needs of each individual. If the individual still had problems with their vision, we would also use the direct ophthalmoscope to further investigate their ocular health.
This trip gave me a great deal of experience in the importance of communication and helping others. The best part of the trip was being able to interact with all the people that we saw. Everyone was extremely patient with my inability to fully communicate in Spanish. I was able to have a more hands on approach to practicing techniques I learned in school on real patients. It allowed me the opportunity to practice in a setting that not only tested my ability to perform certain ocular health techniques but also teaching me how to adapt to new situations, cases, and to better communicate with different people.
I really appreciated everyone’s patience and cooperation. Everyone that participated throughout the trip was a huge asset. There was a great deal of teamwork there that I think was a large contributing factor to the success of the screening. I hope that I will be able to take what I learned from this experience and find other ways to give back to my community both on a global as well as a local scale.