Section 36-7-15.1 - Rules to ensure competence to administer topical agents.
36-7-15.1. Rules to ensure competence to administer topical agents. The State Board of Examiners in Optometry shall adopt rules pursuant to chapter 1-26 to specify additional educational qualifications and to ensure professional competence by those practitioners who apply to the board for a certification enabling them to prescribe and administer diagnostic and therapeutic topical pharmaceutical agents as described in § 36-7-1. The board shall, by rules promulgated pursuant to chapter 1-26, establish separate educational and examination requirements for the certification of optometrists for both diagnostic and therapeutic agents. The board shall make available annual, substantial, in-state pharmaceutical education for licensed optometrists. The initial educational requirements before certification are at least one hundred fifty classroom hours and at least forty hours of clinical experience in pharmaceutical education dealing with diagnosis and treatment of ocular disease. The board shall require a minimum of five hours of continuing pharmaceutical education annually for each optometrist certified for therapeutic agents.
Source: SL 1979, ch 253, § 2; SL 1986, ch 306, § 9; SL 1994, ch 296, § 4.