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Show Letters to the Editor 15. Quartarone A, Pisani A. Abnormal plasticity in dystonia: disruption of synaptic homeostasis. Neurobiol Dis. 2011;42:162-170. 16. Quartarone A, Rizzo V, Bagnato S, Morgante F, Sant'Angelo A, Romano M, Crupi D, Girlanda P, Rothwell JC, Siebner HR. Homeostatic-like plasticity of the primary motor hand area is impaired in focal hand dystonia. Brain. 2005;128(pt 8):1943-1950. 17. Hagemann G, Redecker C, Neumann-Haefelin T, Freund HJ, Witte OW. Increased long-term potentiation in the surround of experimentally induced focal cortical infarction. Ann Neurol. 1998;44:255-258. 18. Levy LM, Hallett M. Impaired brain GABA in focal dystonia. Ann Neurol. 2002;51:93-101. An Evaluation of Educational Neurological Eye Movement Disorder Videos Posted on Internet Video Sharing Sites: Comment agree with the author's call for further regulation of educational videos. In his article, Hickman (1) pointed out that videos from educational institutions and medical journals generally contained better content with fewer errors. The peer-review process is an established route to ensuring videos of high educational quality are produced and uploaded. If these videos were incorporated into modern medical curricula, this would direct students to reliable and trustworthy sources of learning. Moreover, medical students could be encouraged to produce their own content, which may be guided and verified by their teachers. Ultimately, we believe that these 2 proposals would help raise the standard of online educational videos and develop safer practitioners and well-rounded graduates. W e read with great interest the article by Hickman (1) who examined the educational value of eye movement videos on the internet. As medical students with personal experience, we agree with the author that video sharing web sites can be a powerful tool for learning. With regard to ophthalmology-based teaching, modern undergraduate curricula provide little opportunity for such learning, despite the presence of established international guidelines on core concepts that graduating doctors need to practice safety (2). Coupled with the ever-growing body of knowledge and competencies confronting medical students, one may make the case that ophthalmology teaching will be increasingly reduced. Fan et al (3) found that the mean amount of time spent on ophthalmology lectures across medical schools in Asia and Australia was just one day, whereas in the United Kingdom, 21% of universities have no mandatory clinical training in ophthalmology required in their respective curricula (4). Collectively, these examples demonstrate the paucity of education in both preclinical and clinical pedagogy. As a consequence, it is not surprising that there are shortfalls in the diagnosis and management of eye disease, referral accuracy, and confidence in facing ophthalmic problems (5). Thus, alternative methods of teaching, such as internet videos, will become increasingly relied upon for education. Azer (6) compared the content of textbooks, eMedicine articles, and YouTube videos and found that YouTube excelled not only on the user interface front but also in terms of content and integration of information across a molecular and clinical level. Videos provide up-to-date, digestible educational resources that also are interactive, while providing the opportunity to ask questions in the comments section. With the increase of mobile technology and smartphone usage, we suggest that this platform should be investigated as a feasible method for formal teaching. However, unsolicited video sharing with a lack of regulation may cause problems and develop misconceptions in knowledge, and we 352 Ibtesham T. Hossain, BSc (Hons) Hammad H. Malik, BSc (Hons) Sheeraz S. Iqbal, BSc (Hons) School of Medicine, Imperial College London, London, United Kingdom The authors report no conflicts of interest. REFERENCES 1. Hickman SJ. An evaluation of educational neurological eye movement disorder videos posted on internet video sharing sites. J Neuroophthalmol. 2016;36:33-36. 2. International Task Force on Ophthalmic Education of Medical Students on behalf of the International Council of Ophthalmology (ICO). International Curriculum Guidelines on Medical Student Education in Ophthalmology. San Francisco, CA: ICO, 2006. 3. Fan JC, Sherwin T, McGhee CN. Teaching of ophthalmology in undergraduate curricula: a survey of Australasian and Asian medical schools. Clin Experiment Ophthalmol. 2007;35:310- 317. 4. Baylis O, Murray PI, Dayan M. Undergraduate ophthalmology education-a survey of UK medical schools. Med Teach. 2011;33:468-471. 5. Harrison RJ, Wild JM, Hobley AJ. Referral patterns to an ophthalmic outpatient clinic by general practitioners and ophthalmic opticians and the role of these professionals in screening for ocular disease. BMJ. 1988;297:1162-1167. 6. Azer S. Mechanisms in cardiovascular diseases: how useful are medical textbooks, eMedicine, and YouTube? Adv Physiol Educ. 2014;38:124-134. Letters to the Editor: J Neuro-Ophthalmol 2016; 36: 343-352 Copyright © North American Neuro-Ophthalmology Society. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited. |
