The University of Wisconsin Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences welcomed 60 medical and veterinary residents, from 10 institutions nationwide, to the annual 2-day phacoemulsification cataract extraction course on August 15-16, 2025. The event us hosted jointly by our department, the University of Iowa, and the Medical College of Wisconsin. An additional six visiting students, one UW medical student, a pathology/Wisconsin Reading Center pre-residency fellow, and four DOVS PGY-1 residents also attended the first day of the course. 33 faculty, including one DOVS cornea fellow, provided instruction in didactics and wet lab. At what may be the longest consistently running program of its kind in the country, attendees learned about all aspects of removing cataracts in this three-year, progressive course that includes both lectures and wet lab practice.
Dr. Susan Culican, MD, PhD, was the invited speaker for the Greg Anderson Lecture. She is the Senior Associate Dean of Graduate Medical Education and Co-Leader of the Office of Medical Education with the University of Minnesota. She gave a highly interactive engaging talk that focused on surgical competence including potentially raising the cataract surgery minimum to 150.
This course would not have been possible without the generous support from industries including Alcon Vision, Zeiss, New World Medical, Genetech, Glaukos, Sight Sciences, Johnson & Johnson, MiscroSurgical Technology, Bausch & Lomb, and of course, our DOVS Carl and Mary Ann Berg Phacomulsification Course Excellence Fund. Our partnership with the industries have grown over the years, and we had the largest number of industries participating this year.
The course just ended, but the education team is already gearing up for the next year’s course that will take place on August 14-15, 2026.
