Summer Internships at California Retina Consultants

Application for Internship-download

This past summer, Westmont, UC Berkely, UC Davis and UC San Diego college students and recent grads worked as research interns with the California Retina Consultants in various offices. For the past three summers, California Retina has employed a select few summer interns, thanks to generous grants from Cottage Hospital and the California Retina Research Foundation

Dr. Robert Avery and Dr. Dante Pieramici interview candidates for the coveted positions. Dr. Avery states, Our internship program provides hands-on experience under the tutelage of our highly qualified staff. This past summer Stephanie Yaplee (senior, UC Riverside), David Conant (sophomore, UCSD), and Shannon Householder (freshman, UC Davis), completed the program and were able to shadow physicians in the clinic and observe surgical cases in the operating room. They performed visual acuity examinations, operated the OCT machine and measured vital signs on clinical study patients. They also helped to conduct studies to evaluate surgical treatments of retinal detachments and the preoperative use of intravitreal bevacizumab (IVB) as an adjunct to vitrectomy for the treatment of complications of proliferative diabetic retinopathy.

Two interns from previous years became published authors this past year. Sarah Risard ( junior, Westmont College) was the first author on one case report Cystoid Macular Edema Secondary to Paclitaxel (Abraxane) and coauthored Retinal Neovascularization Associated with a Retinal Arterial Macroaneurysm. Spencer Price ( junior, UC Berkeley) was the first author on a case report entitled Choroidal Metastasis of Bartholin's Gland Adenoid Cystic Carcinoma. All three case reports were submitted for publication in the peer-reviewed journal Retinal Cases and Brief Reports.