UT Southwestern Ophthalmology residency and fellowship program recruiting series. David R. Weakley. Jr., M.D. Pediatric Ophthalmology Preceptor
We have a fellowship that covers all areas of pediatric ophthalmology. It is based primarily at the two Children's hospital locations. My partner dr serena Wong and I are the pediatric ophthalmologist that cover those two sites. And we also have several sub specialists from within our department. So the fellows have the opportunity to do general pediatric ophthalmology but also be involved in all the subspecialty areas at our primary site. Our children's clinics and children's hospitals as well as our adult facilities are really state of the art. We see about 20,000 pediatric office visits annually and we perform somewhere between 1500 and 2000 pediatric ophthalmology surgeries. Our incoming fellows have a very broad range of experience. We have fellows who have extensive experience in pediatric ophthalmology and we also have fellows that have had limited exposure to pediatric ophthalmology in their residency. A fellowship based at a Children's hospital gives you a much broader exposure to the different areas within pediatric ophthalmology. Strong opportunity for both clinical work and surgical work. Pediatric cataract surgery, pediatric lens implantation as well as ROP glaucoma plastics. Are fellows get a very large number of strabismus surgeries. We also do some adults for business as well. It's a year of being very involved in having the opportunity to see patients on your own, making your own clinical and surgical decisions under supervision. They also have a good opportunity to teach our residents in a year span of time. They will work with 18 different residents rotating through our program. What we would like to see from our graduates is physicians who feel like that they are comfortable really in any type of problem that they might be faced with in a pediatric patient. Our fellows go into private practice. Our fellows go into academic medicine. I think you would be well trained and well prepared for either type of practice, whichever one suits you.
