UWI in Society
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Dr. Sharma sitting behind the OCT (Optical Coherence Tomography)
Optometry Department
meets the need for vision specialists Optometrist Dr. Subash Sharma could well have been retired by now. “I was supposed to be traveling around the world with my wife enjoying myself,” says Dr. Sharma, the clinical coordinator of UWI St. Augustine’s Department of Optometry and Visual Sciences. Instead, he’s sitting behind his desk, making plans for the sustainability of the only English-speaking Optometry school in the Caribbean. “I’m stuck here,” he jokes. “But I enjoy it. I’ve always enjoyed optometry. I’ve always enjoyed lecturing.” The University approached Dr. Sharma to establish the department in 2009. He was then in private practice, a specialist in contact lensfitting, with experience in lecturing and lab work. Private practitioners,
STAN MAY - JUNE 2016
complaining of perennial shortages of qualified manpower, had finally convinced UWI of the need for a school. Dr. Sharma agreed to the challenge. Seven years later, on the cusp of graduating his fourth cohort and 100th student, he’s still at it. Tucked in beside the Seismic Research Centre on Gordon Street in St. Augustine, the Optometry Department operates from a building that boasts of visiontesting equipment available nowhere else in the country. Its staff is small, with only four full-time lecturers including Dr. Sharma. All but Dr. Sharma are foreigners. “We thought it would be easier to recruit staff,” he says. “And we found out it’s not easy. So I’m holding on.”
It’s just as well that he has. The department has begun to fill the need for local optometrists. Based on an international ratio of 8,000 people per optometrist, T&T requires 150. He says there are only 110 on the books. “And two-thirds of that are old people who are hardly working or not working at all. So we are badly off.” The department has also enhanced capacity in the public hospitals, where the number of publicly employed optometrists can be counted on one finger. (She’s in the Eastern Regional Health Authority. Her name is Petra Bridgemohan.) It’s the fourth year students’ mandatory rotations that have benefited the public sector.