A satellite clinic of the University of Waterloo's school of optometry has opened in the Centre for Family Medicine in downtown Kitchener.
"We're seizing the opportunity to serve the population of Kitchener," Debbie Jones, the clinic's director, said after the official opening yesterday. "It's a chance to be a part of the Centre for Family Medicine, and it gives us another location for our students."
The Centre for Family Medicine is at 25 Joseph St., in what used to be the Victoria School Centre. The services that were offered in the Victoria School Centre have moved over to the former St. Mary's high school on Weber Street
At any given time, three senior students from the optometry school will be doing field studies at the satellite clinic and conducting eye examinations under the supervision of a licensed optometrist.
"It's really a miniature version of what we have at the Waterloo school," Jones said.
But, she said, the Kitchener clinic will give students exposure to working in the community, alongside a medical clinic and pharmacy. It's important for optometry students to practise their professional skills with real patients in a clinical setting.
As well, a branch of the university's Centre for
contact lens Research will operate out of the Kitchener site -- testing new designs and materials, using study participants who would find it inconvenient to travel to the Waterloo campus.
The satellite clinic was officially opened yesterday by Kitchener Mayor Carl Zehr, University of Waterloo president David Johnston and Dr. Trefford Simpson, the interim director of the optometry school.
They hailed the satellite clinic as a small part of a larger program to locate the university's School of Pharmacy, as well as a branch of McMaster University's School of Medicine, in Kitchener's core, at King and Victoria streets.
"This is a huge step for this community," Zehr said, "and for those of us doing the dreaming and the visualizing who don't fully realize where all of this is going to take us."
The school is the only training centre for optometrists in English-speaking Canada. Johnston said it is "the largest vision research facility in the world."
The school has 290 students, but its enrolment will grow to 360 over the next several years.