Eye Clinic Policy

AN INCREASE in the number of persons examined and treated at the Clinic of the Dartmouth Eye Institute, resulting in serious hindrance to the major research purposes of the Institute, has forced the adoption of a restrictive policy toward new patients, it was recently announced by John Pearson '11, executive director.

So that new cases will provide the clinic staff with the difficult problems of binocular vision with which its research program is concerned, and will not as heretofore present comparatively simple problems which can be treated adequately by other ophthalmologists, the Eye Institute has decided to accept only the new patients referred to it by physicians and optometrists. Patients previously treated at the Eye Clinic will continue to have direct relations with the Clinic, without the necessity of referral, and members of the College or College community will also have such direct relations.

In announcing this new policy, Mr. Pearson emphasized the fact that its adoption had become absolutely essential to the successful continuance of the clinical research which has brought scientific honor to die Dartmouth Eye Institute, as well as to the successful broadening of research into allied problems which have recently arisen. When the Eye Clinic was officially established in 1936, its main purpose was to assist the College's research in physiological optics by making difficult eye cases available through clinical practice. With the Institute's growing reputation, patients from nearly every state in the nation and even from abroad have applied directly to the Clinic for examination and treatment and have been accepted without professional referral. A large number of these cases have consisted of simple eye strain generally encountered by ophthalmologists, thereby diverting members of the clinical staff from their basic research and disorganizing and slowing down the Institute's unique work in the field of binocular vision.

Further national publicity was recently given to the Eye Institute with the appearance in the February Reader's Digest of a condensation of an article previously published in Cosmopolitan magazine. Within two weeks after the appearance of Reader'sDigest.inquiries had been received by the Clinic from forty-four different states. Most of these inquiries can now be referred to associated clinics which are being established throughout the country by clinicians trained at the Eye Institute in Hanover. These clinics now exist in Boston, New York, Baltimore, Washington, D. C., Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and San Francisco. Negotiations are also under way to establish additional clinics in Hartford, Philadelphia, Cleveland and Chicago.