EyeCon 2023: Florida OD licensing: Jurisprudence laws and rules of practice

Alice Sterling, an optometrist with Florida Eye Clinic, draws on her 8 years of service on the Florida Board of Optometry to present and explain the evolving jurisprudence issues relevant to Florida optometrists during EyeCon 2023.

Video Transcript

Editor's note - This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Alice Sterling, OD: Hi, I'm Alice Sterling. I'm an optometrist. I work with Florida Eye Clinic, which is a large MD-OD group in Central Florida. I am invited here today because I have my little area of expertise.

Having served 8 years on the Florida Board of Optometry, I'm a likely good candidate to be able to present and explain the Florida jurisprudence issues. And this is a required course for Florida optometrists that be taken every biennium, so every 2 years. This is required to take again.

Same thing with prevention of medical errors. It's a required course for Florida optometrists, and a lot of the information between these two courses goes hand in hand.

It is important to keep doing this every year, even though I get asked this from the audience a lot. One and done is not good enough because the laws are changing in jurisprudence, and in prevention of medical errors. We all need to be reminded. It's one of those things like you read the Bible, but every time you read it, there's something new that shows up. Every time you go through prevention and medical errors, you find that maybe I could do better here. Maybe I need to be more conscientious of handling this situation correctly.

So I feel that it is important to keep doing this every 2 years, not just for me because I learned it well but for the audience who just has the opportunity to gain a new little piece of information each time.