Anonymous survey results of ophthalmology residents of Russian medical universities on the status of their visual analyzer

BACKGROUND: A widespread visual impairment among medical students is known, but there are no data on the ophthalmic status of clinical residents. AIM: To carry out an assessment of the visual analyzer status in Russian medical universities graduates who begin the clinical residency according to the specialty 31.08.59 Ophthalmology. MATERIALS AND METHODS: An anonymous residents’ online survey was conducted in 15 universities from 14 cities using an original interactive questionnaire. Responses were received from 249 respondents (mostly females: n = 188, 75.5%; mean age 24.80 ± 0.06 years). To compare, we used previously published data on a survey of senior students from 5 Russian medical universities, including 549 respondents (425 females, 77.4%; mean age 22.4 ± 0.06 years). RESULTS: In comparison to students, residents were significantly more likely to rate their vision as excellent (20.8% and 28.9%, respectively, p = 0.01), to report emmetropia (16.2% versus 26.9%, p 0.001), to deny continuing vision deterioration (33.0% and 43.5%, p 0.005), to rate higher the importance of good vision (9.25 ± 0.06 and 9.73 ± 0.05 conditional points, respectively, p 0.01). Students significantly more often did not know the meaning of the “clinical refraction” term (2.6% and 0.4%, respectively, p = 0.04), more often reported vision problems interfering with their studies (26.2% and 15.7%, p = 0.01), and reported ongoing vision deterioration (57.9% versus 45.0%, p 0.001). Otherwise, survey results were comparable. CONCLUSIONS: Visual impairments are widespread among clinical residents-ophthalmologists of Russian medical universities, 58.2% of the responders had ametropia (including 56.1% of myopia), 28.5% had astigmatism, 3.6% had other ocular conditions. The majority of survey participants (59.8%) used or felt a need in optical correction, 19.7% rated their vision as “poor” or “very poor”, about a half (45.0%) believed their vision to worsen during recent years, and about as much (46.6%) reported that they experience limitations in everyday life related to decreased vision. Insufficient awareness of a part of the responders about their vision, and in some responders, a lack in basic ophthalmological knowledge were revealed.