Program Highlights

Our faculty are passionate about the success of each resident. The small size of our residency program allows residents to work directly, one-on-one with faculty. Participants can expect early surgical experience, including opportunities to serve as primary surgeon as early as their second year.

Other program highlights include:

• Our environment supports residents both personally and professionally.
• High surgical numbers, with residents graduating with over 250 primary cataract surgeries. The average number of primary cataract procedures is over 300.
• Great history of fellowship placement.
• Numerous opportunities to be involved in research.
• Ophthalmology resident lounge within the Truhlsen Eye Institute with ping-pong table, X-Box, four computer stations, private lockers, small refrigerator, library of textbooks, and AV system with projector to watch conferences, lectures, or other media (including the X-box).
• Simulation lab with an Eyesi Cataract and Vitreoretinal Surgical simulator as well as an EyeSi Indirect Ophthalmoscopy simulator and an OphthoSim Direct Ophthalmoscopy training and simulation system.
• Wet lab including late-model phacoemulsification machines, suturing stations with operating microscopy, and plenty of surgical instruments for various types of ophthalmic procedures.
• UNMC iEXCEL: cutting edge 3D, VR and other simulation technology located on campus near the Truhlsen Eye Institute.
• Skywalk from the eye institute to the Fritch Surgery Center means residents can travel from clinic to surgery in under five minutes without going outside.

• The Truhlsen Eye Institute is a well-appointed, free-standing building with plenty of space and top-notch equipment that opened in 2013.
• Clinics are located on the first and second floors, and include state-of-the-art diagnostics equipment as well as our Carl Camras Clinical Research wing.
• The third floor includes faculty offices, a spacious resident lounge with computers, lockers, couches, ping pong table, wide-screen television, and X-box, as well as the residents’ wet lab and medical and surgical simulation lab.
• The Fritch Surgery Center is next door, and the buildings are connected by a climate-controlled walkway.
• Residents also have the opportunity to attend surgeries at the Truhlsen Eye Institute’s Village Pointe campus in west Omaha, which includes our refractive surgery suites.
• We work in conjunction with the 718-bed Nebraska Medicine hospital, which is a five-minute walk outside from TEI or less than a 10-minute walk traversing a series of interconnected climate-controlled walkways.
• The Omaha VA Medical Center is also easily reachable – a five-minute drive or 20-minute walk. The Ambulatory Care Center opened in 2020.