The provision of primary eye care is rapidly changing, with practitioners becoming increasingly involved in the diagnosis, management and co-management of a wide range of eye conditions. The MSc Clinical Ophthalmology and Vision Research (COVR) is designed to provide eye care professionals with an enhanced knowledge in clinical decision making as the basis for the safe and effective management of a wide range of ocular conditions. Depending on the professional requirements and personal interest, students can tailor their MSc according to speciality with options of MSc COVR (Diabetes) and MSc COVR (Therapeutics).
Primary eye care is rapidly expanding to include diagnosing and treating ocular disease in close collaboration with secondary and tertiary care providers. For optometrists, these new roles are in addition to their traditional role of examining eyes and determining the refractive prescription. The management of eye conditions is normally carried out either independently or in partnership with medical practitioners. These new roles involve taking on greater responsibilities, and require additional specialised academic training.

The programme contains elements of the successful postgraduate course “Therapeutic Prescribing for Optometrists”, allowing eligible GOC-registered optometrists to combine their Independent Prescriber training with a higher academic degree, subsequently gaining the therapeutics qualification as well as an MSc degree.
For international students, clinical placements will be available
to enhance their diagnostic expertise and allow familiarization with state-of-the-art clinical instrumentation including OCT, super-wide field fundus photography and specular microscopy.
The programme is suitable for primary eye care practitioners, including optometrists, ophthalmologists and orthoptists, looking to advance their clinical career and/or to obtain research experience, e.g. as a preparation for further postgraduate studies at PhD-level.

The programme has a modular structure, including lectures, tutorials, clinical training and a research project.

A range of assessment methods will be used including formal exams, case reports, oral presentations and clinical assessments as well as assessment of the research project/MSc dissertation.

MSc Clinical Ophthalmology and Vision Research (Diabetes)
MSc Clinical Ophthalmology and Vision Research (Therapeutics)
MSc Clinical Ophthalmology and Vision Research (Generic)