655-420 Community Optometry

Coordinator:

Prerequisite/s:

Timetable:

Contact:

Objectives:

On completion of this course, students will:

• understand how community decisions bear on visual well-being and visual efficiency;

• understand the principles of ergonomics and how they apply to the design of displays of visual information;

• be able to analyse task demands and work environments to identify faults that may impede the acquisition of visual information or cause visual distress and will be able to apply fundamental principles to rectify those faults. In particular, they will be able to measure and analyse task and environmental lighting and make calculations and predictions about lighting in relation to established standard practices;

• understand the fundamental principles of safety at work and the means by which appropriate protection of the eyes may be provided;

• understand the principles that should underlie the setting of occupational vision standards;

• be able to advise on visual standards and test compliance to those standards.

Content:

The nature and scope of public health and public health optometry. Human factors engineering: alteration of the task and environment to improve visual performance; illuminating engineering. Accident prevention: injury as a major public health problem, incidence and nature of occupational and vocational injury, theories of accident causation and strategies of accident prevention; eye injuries, eye protection in the industrial environment. Vision standards: vision in relation to task demand, the evidence relating vision to task performance, the principles underlying the setting of visual standards. Vision screening.

Assessment: