By Jaclyn Chang, OD

Continuing Education is a requirement of maintaining membership with your College, but it also gives you the opportunity to learn on your own time and expand your knowledge in areas that you are particularly interested in learning more about.

Consider the Source.
Many commercial organizations provide sponsorship in the form of an unrestricted educational grant to the education provider. Commercial grants usually allow the education provider to make the course content available without charge.

Non-granted CE does not entail commercial sponsorship or provide any grant towards the development of the CE. A typical charge of $15 – $25 USD per accredit hour is normal.

CRO (Clinical & Refractive Optometry) Online CE, derived from the CRO peer-reviewed Journal is a good example of a resource that provides CE without commercial grants.

COPE has Strict Rules.
Course instructors are required to declare their involvement, if any, with commercial entities at the outset of a course.

The course content, however, is supposed to be absent of any commercial influence in the development, promotion and delivery of the content.

Below are some resources to help you out – visit the websites for more details and the most up-to-date information.

Non-granted Continuing Education.
Clinical & Refractive Optometry (CRO) offers paid CE hours, with some free hours available. Access to course content and preview of the test is free. Course authors almost exclusively come from challenging clinical settings such as optometry school clinics and US Veteran’s Affairs clinics.  Courses are present in text format and can be taken at any time.

CRO is also on the approved list of Journals for AAO Fellowship application. Fellowship applicants can earn 10 points by having a paper accepted and published in CRO.

Optocase offers paid CE hours, with some free hours available: https://optocase.com/

CE Wire, a virtual CE conference, is a commonly used resource to obtain many CE hours at an affordable price. They offer 64 CE hours and 4 live events: https://www.cewire2021.com/

The Academy of Ophthalmic Education, offers paid CE hours with some free hours available: https://www.aoece.com/education

Many optometry schools offer continuing education, including the University of Waterloo:
https://uwaterloo.ca/optometry-vision-science/continuing-education

For continuing education from SECO, including paid CE and occasional free courses, visit:
https://secouniversity.com/cope-individual-courses-full-listing/

Eye Code Education offers paid CE hours: https://www.eyecodeeducation.com/collections?category=continuing-education

 

Granted Continuing Education

Review of Optometry: https://www.revieweducationgroup.com/

MedEdicus: https://www.pathlms.com/mededicus

Review of Myopia Management: https://reviewofmm.com/category/continuing-education/

CL Spectrum: https://www.clspectrum.com/continuing-education-center

EyeSchool.ca: http://www.eyeschool.ca/

Evolve Medical Education offers free CE for a number of specialties, including optometry: https://evolvemeded.com/

Healio offers free CE for a number of specialties, including optometry: https://cme.healio.com/optometry

Industry partners often sponsor CE, including TLC Laser Eye Centers. Notifications of upcoming webinars are emailed out if you are on their mailing list. The previously used link has not yet been updated for 2021, but is here for your future reference: https://www.tlcvision.com/ceseries/

For Your Learning (non-COPE)

Dr. Ike K Ahmed, MD hosts Prism Eye Rounds: https://www.prismeyeinstitute.com/webinars/

Zeiss offers educational webinars: https://www.zeiss.ca/meditec/en/c/zeiss-educational-webinars.html

They also have texts available for download for a limited time:
https://www.zeiss.ca/meditec/en/c/effective-perimetry-free-book.html
https://www.zeiss.ca/meditec/en/c/practical-angiography-free-book.html

Other Resources
Gonioscopy: http://gonioscopy.org/
Iowa Glaucoma Curriculum: http://curriculum.iowaglaucoma.org/

OCTs: https://www.octcases.com/

Resources from Dr. Ron Melton, OD and Dr. Randall Thomas, OD: https://www.eyeupdate.com/

KMK Educational Services also produce updates for ODs: https://www.kmkoptometrypro.com/

Videos and other resources from Dr. Timothy Root, MD: https://timroot.com/

Resources from ophthalmology residents: https://eyeguru.org/

Spending the time to learn more about a subject is an investment in your future and helps you become the best OD you can be!

 

CRO (Clinical & Refractive Optometry)  Journal (www.CROJournal.com)  will provide  one free COPE credit for any new OD signing up to the NewOptometrist.ca e-newsletter.  The free credit can be applied to any course in the CRO Catalogue.

Click Here to Sign up Now.

JACLYN CHANG, OD

Editor NewOptometrist.ca

Dr. Jaclyn Chang graduated from the University of Waterloo (UW) with an Honours Bachelor of Science in Biomedical Sciences before continuing at Waterloo to complete her Doctor of Optometry degree. She is currently a practicing optometrist in Toronto.

Dr. Chang is committed to sharing information and bringing new resources to her colleagues. As a student, she sat on the Board of Trustees for the American Optometric Student Association, organizing events to connect students with industry. She was the Co-Founder/Co-President of the award-winning UW Advancement of Independent Optometry Club, the first club at UW dedicated to private practice optometry. Dr. Chang is also a passionate writer, who aims to make information accessible and easily digestible to her colleagues. She has published in Optometry & Vision Science and Foresight magazine and contributed to Optik magazine. She is excited to bring valuable resources to Canada’s next generation of optometrists with NewOptometrist.ca.


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CRO Online provides new Optometrists the opportunity to extend the intensive learning paradigm beyond academia through challenging case studies and comprehensive topic reviews  – all for CE credits as well.

Category:    Online Journal & Continuing Education

CRO is a  digital journal offering COPE accredited CE courses online. The journal focuses on a wide range of clinical and scientific topics of interest to optometrists and in everyday practice.

Articles are also presented as COPE accredited courses, which are accepted by provincial/state  regulators across North America. Current issues of the journal are available online.  View the Journal.

CRO Journal is open-access and peer reviewed.

CRO is a division of VuePoint IDS Inc., a Canadian owned and operated company.

Each CRO Journal article is also a COPE-accredited course. The articles are available in a companion website: CRO Online. Credit is earned by completing a 10 question quiz which is graded immediately. The accreditation certificate is available in your CRO dashboard, ready to send to your College.

The vast majority of course authors are ODs practicing in challenging and high patient volume clinical settings , such as university clinics and Veterans’ Affairs hospitals in US.  Cases are selected for their learning value to primary care optometric physicians.

All CRO (Clinical & Refractive Optometry) online courses are peer-reviewed three times: By the CRO Editorial board, by an independent review board at a bona fide school of Optometry in North America, and then finally by an independently assigned COPE reviewer.

Multiple ways to purchase CE

At CRO Online CE you can create a free account and purchase CE when you want. Alternatively, you can pre-purchase course credits of 5 or 10 hours that can be applied anytime.  The best value is to purchase full access to any course at anytime with a full ANNUAL (365 days) Premium Package.

All prices are in Canadian $ 
(CRO is owned and operated by a Canadian Company, VuePoint IDS Inc.)

+Each course is purchased à la carte
+All courses available for individual purchase
+Membership never expires ( delete account anytime)
+Get email notification of each new issue of the journal

+Pre-purchase 5 x 1-hour credits
+Apply credits to any course in the catalog
+Can use credits anytime over a one-year period.
+Get email notification of each new issue of the journal

+Pre-purchase 10 x 1-hour credits
+Apply credits to any course in the catalog
+Can use credits anytime over a one-year period.
+Get email notification of each new issue of the journal

+All courses in the catalog are available at no added cost
+Annual membership is valid for 365 days
+Use credits at anytime to take any CRO course
+Get email notification of each new issue of the journal

View the CRO catalog of courses.
All courses can be previewed before enrolling

Frequently Asked Question

Course instructors are mostly from challenging clinical settings including Optometry School clinics and VA hospitals. They share their challenging case studies through CRO to further the education of the profession.  Course authors are not compensated for their manuscripts.

 

Yes.  In fact CRO is 3X peer reviewed:

  • By CRO Editorial Board
  • Independently by a COPE authorized School of Optometry
  • By a COPE assigned reviewer

 

There are a limited number of free courses that are “granted” by commercial interests.

 

Approximately $20 per 1 hour COPE accredited course.  There are a limited number of 2-hour courses.

 

Yes, you can upgrade at any time after signing up. You can create a basic membership for free. This provides access to the entire CRO course catalog.  You can upgrade to Annual Premium Subscriber which provides access to all CRO Courses at no additional charge for a 365 day period. You can take those courses anytime, any where.

 

The communication and upload of certificates to ARBO is a manual process which causes a delay – ARBO does not offer an API.  So, for the moment, we are not providing direct upload to ARBO. Your COPE certificate will be immediately generated for download in the dashboard.  Nevertheless, we have put this task on our development path.

 

Ready to Sign up to CRO?  Click one of the buttons below.

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