Carla Bourne

Affiliation

James A Haley VA Hospital

Biography

Dr. Bourne was born and raised in the beautiful Caribbean island of Barbados. She chose to pursue tertiary education in the United States and completed her Medical Degree at Howard University College of Medicine in Washington, DC. After completing internship at Eastern Virginia Medical School in Norfolk, VA, she returned to Washington DC for Ophthalmology. Subsequently, she completed a clinical and surgical Glaucoma Fellowship at Ophthalmic Consultants of Boston/Tufts Medical Center in Boston, Massachusetts. During her seven years on faculty at the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, she was Director of the Ophthalmology Medical Student Clerkship, and worked directly with the Morsani College of Medicine (USF) as a Preceptor in the inaugural Doctoring One program. She was later recruited as one of the Collegium Directors for their Career Advising program at the medical school. She was the department’s Principal Investigator for pharmaceutical trials of glaucoma medications and an Assistant Professor, teaching glaucoma and cataract surgery to fellows, residents and medical students. She relocated to Orlando and joined the staff of the Department of Veterans Affairs in Lake Nona, Orlando as their solo Glaucoma Specialist covering the Daytona, Viera and Orlando region in Florida. To ensure that our Veterans had access to the latest technology, she introduced minimally invasive glaucoma surgical techniques to the practice. The position allowed her to continue her work in education- teaching medical students from the University of Central Florida (UCF), staffing residents from the University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) and her alma mater Howard University in cataract and glaucoma surgeries. In late 2019 she returned to Tampa to provide clinical and surgical care for the Ophthalmology Department at the James A. Haley Veteran’s Hospital and resumed working directly with USF residents and fellows. She enjoys teaching and over the past years has lectured at several sessions, including the annual meetings for the American Academy of Ophthalmology, the National Medical Association, Women in Ophthalmology, Florida Society of Ophthalmology and Ophthalmological Society of the West Indies (OSWI) and Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology (JCACHPO) sessions.