HUDSON, NC (September 5, 2017)…Caldwell Community College and Technical Institute’s Health Sciences Department Chair and Ophthalmic Medical Assisting Program Director Barbara Harris was recently tasked with writing the foreword for the 10th edition of The Ophthalmic Assistant, the best-selling and most widely used textbook for OMA programs across the nation.
Harris was asked to write the piece by one of the textbook’s co-authors, Dr. Melvin Freeman, with whom she has served on the Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology (JCAHPO) board.
“I worked with Dr. Freeman on the development of a standard ophthalmic educational curriculum for the International Council of Ophthalmology, which is largely modeled on the curriculum we developed for CCC&TI and the North Carolina Community College System,” said Harris. “The Ophthalmic Assistant has been one of the main textbooks for CCC&TI’s OMA program since it began in 1999. Dr. Freeman asked me to write a forward addressing its value for physician extenders for the 10th edition. He knew that I had worked as a physician assistant in ophthalmology for a number of years prior to coming to work at the college.”
Harris has 40 years of experience in the healthcare field and was instrumental in establishing CCC&TI’s OMA program, the first of its kind in North Carolina and the model for similar programs established at other community colleges.
In addition, Harris has served for a number of years on the JCAHPO Board, The Commission on Accreditation of Ophthalmic Programs (CoA-OMP) Board, the Consortium of Ophthalmic Training Programs (COTP) and a number of other national and statewide health sciences boards and associations. She has made presentations on a wide variety of ophthalmic topics at seminars and meetings across the United States and has been published in a number of medical journals and textbooks.
For more information on CCC&TI’s Health Sciences or Ophthalmic Medical Assistant programs, visit www.cccti.edu.