==== Front Indian J OphthalmolIndian J OphthalmolIJOIndian Journal of Ophthalmology0301-47381998-3689Medknow Publications & Media Pvt Ltd India IJO-66-122510.4103/ijo.IJO_357_18Letters to the EditorRubric for assessment of eye bank professionals for eye retrieval: A new tool and a step toward standardizing eye retrieval process Acharya Manisha Farooqui Javed Hussain Mathur Umang Department of Cornea, Cataract and Refractive Surgery, Dr. Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital, Daryaganj, New Delhi, India Correspondence to: Dr. Manisha Acharya, Department of Cornea, Cataract and Refractive Surgery, Dr. Shroff's Charity Eye Hospital, 5027, Kedarnath Marg, Daryaganj, New Delhi - 110 002, India. E-mail: manisha28dr@gmail.com8 2018 66 8 1225 1227 Copyright: © 2018 Indian Journal of Ophthalmology2018This is an open access journal, and articles are distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 License, which allows others to remix, tweak, and build upon the work non-commercially, as long as appropriate credit is given and the new creations are licensed under the identical terms. ==== Body Sir, We write to you as a continuation of the work that we have been doing in standardizing eye bank facilities at our institute. After discussing about the quality indicators in eye bank, we would like to add to the thoughts of Prajna in discussing about the importance of “Good Quality” in Eye Banks.[12] Prajna, in his guest editorial, discussed how The Eye Bank Association of India has grown and created awareness about eye donation.[2] He also mentions about the operational standards and practices, and we would like to give our inputs for the same.[2] The Government of India has now authorized certified eye bank technicians to do eye retrieval under Human Organ Transplant Act, 1994.[3] However, there are no clear-cut guidelines on how to assess their retrieval capabilities. We have been working on an assessment tool, which can be used for their assessment. This is based on the recommendations by Honavar[4] and Farooqui et al.,[5] which mention modifications of the Ophthalmology Surgical Competency Assessment Rubric (OSCAR) for assessing trainees as an educational tool. We devised a new rubric-Rubric for Assessment of Eyecare Professionals for Eye Retrieval (RAEPER) and have tried to implement it as a pilot study assessing eye bank technicians’ eye retrieval capabilities [Fig. 1a–c]. Figure 1(a) (a) Rubric for assessment of eye care professionals for eye retrieval Figure 1(b) (b) Rubric for assessment of eye care professionals for eye retrieval Figure 1(c) (c) Rubric for assessment of eye care professionals for eye retrieval A total of six technicians, with a minimum experience of 20 independent In Situ Corneoscleral rim retrievals, enrolled as trainees. One-day workshop comprising of didactic lectures, educational videos, and eye retrieval assessment was conducted. The assessment, which was performed on human eyes, was done by two independent trainers (cornea consultants who have been involved with training fellows and well versed with OSCAR). It was seen that both the trainer's scores matched closely in the following skills-surgical hand scrubbing (P = 0.317), gloving (P = 0.131), and manual dexterity (P = 0.615). There was a discrepancy between both scores in incision through sclera (P = 0.43), scissor technique (P = 0.221), and leakage of vitreous (P = 0.048). From this exercise, we tried to validate our assessment tool. We feel that RAEPER is useful to develop training guidelines, identifying gaps and eventually improving eye retrieval process. In addition, this rubric can be used to assess eye bank technicians, residents, fellows, or eye bank personnel certified and assigned with the duty of eye retrieval. Similarly, the trainer can be an Eye Bank manager, senior technician or an ophthalmologist who has experience in eye retrieval process, and not just cornea surgeons. We have started a multicentric study using this tool, but till the results are awaited, we would like to encourage other readers to start using RAEPER in their Eye Banks. Financial support and sponsorship Nil. Conflicts of interest There are no conflicts of interest. Acknowledgment We would like to acknowledge Dr. Abha Gaur, Dr. Prem Prakash Singh, and Mr. Animesh Das for their time and valuable inputs as trainers. We are also grateful to Miracles in Sight, USA, and SightLife™ for their support and for sharing the educational material and videos with us. ==== Refs 1 Acharya M Biswas S Das A Mathur U Dave A Singh A Quality indicators for eye bank Indian J Ophthalmol 2018 66 389 93 29480248 2 Prajna VN Shah M Good quality pays rich dividends Indian J Ophthalmol 2018 66 357 8 29480242 3 The Transplantation of Human Organs and Tissues Act 1994 Last accessed on 2018 Mar 12 Available from: http://www.lawmin.nic.in/ld/PACT/1994/The%20Transplantation%20of%20Human%20Organs%20and%20Tissues%20Act,%201994.pdf 4 Honavar SG How good a surgeon are you.– Standardized formative assessment of surgical competence for ophthalmology residents in training? Indian J Ophthalmol 2017 65 777 8 28905816 5 Farooqui JH Jaramillo A Sharma M Gomaa A Use of modified international council of ophthalmology- ophthalmology surgical competency assessment rubric (ICO- OSCAR) for phacoemulsification- wet lab training in residency program Indian J Ophthalmol 2017 65 898 9 28905845