Clinical Lead for Optometry

Do you want to come and work for an outstanding rated Trust? Want to develop your career in one of the best performing NHS Trust’s in the country? Come and join and lead our fantastic Optometry team.

SWFT is seeking to recruit a Full Time (37.5 hours per week) Band 7 Clinical Lead for Optometry Services within the Machen Eye Unit. The post will support the ophthalmology clinical pathways and the post holder will exercise high levels of judgement, discretion and decision making in leading optometry clinical care. They will provide specialist expertise and advice demonstrating a sound understanding of the issues related to the identification, assessment, treatment and management of the client group. They will monitor and improve standards of care through, supervision of practice, clinical audit, evidence based practice, teaching and supporting professional colleagues and the provision of skilled professional leadership. The successful applicant will contribute to clinical governance within the service by undertaking audit and research within the specialist field and contributing to the development of shared care provision and changing working practices.

The post holder will work closely with the general manager, optometric colleagues, consultant ophthalmologists, orthoptists and nursing staff in order to deliver high standards of quality and care. The post holder will work collaboratively with colleagues to manage the daily running of optometric services.

The post holder has responsibility for developing and implementing an autonomous core optometric service which will provide comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic clinical optometry support to the Ophthalmology Department.

This includes refraction, contact lens, paediatric and low vision services and extended role clinics

The post holder will develop the Optometry Department’s role in co-managed care to increase non-medical clinic capacity, working with the General Manager, Clinical Director and medical team to meet the changing service delivery in the Ophthalmology department.

The post holder will also provide clinical management and professional support to all employees within the Optometry Department.

To lead the optometry team and provide professional optometry advice to the General Manager.

Contribute to management meetings as necessary.

To ensure sufficient and safe staffing levels are in place to deliver the service needs.

To contribute to the management of the unit, working with the General Manager.

Come and join a Trust rated Outstanding by the CQC. South Warwickshire NHS Foundation Trust have been rated as outstanding following our latest inspection by the CQC and we are recruiting new staff to come and help us improve even further.

We provide services across Warwickshire and beyond ranging from Hospitals in Warwick, Stratford-Upon-Avon, Royal Leamington Spa and Shipston-on Stour to Community Services across the county. We are a progressive, expanding organisation with great ambition around improving quality, integrating pathways and delivering high levels of productivity.

Our values can be summed up in one sentence. We are ‘Trusted to provide safe, effective and compassionate care’. Throughout the recruitment process you will be asked to think about how you demonstrate these values and how they impact on your work. It doesn’t matter what role you do, whether it is patient facing or not, we are all working in the same way with our values at the core.

**Key Result Areas**:
Clinical Responsibilities

To ensure the provision of a highly specialised adult and paediatric refraction service including patients with specific learning difficulties and special needs, in line with the requirements of the Ophthalmology Department. This involves highly skilled and accurate observations using precision instruments (retinoscopy, ophthalmoscopy, slit lamp microscopy).

To ensure provision of overall optical advice to patients, parents and carers and issue prescriptions for spectacles where necessary, giving appropriate detailed instruction and making complex judgements regarding patients’ treatment and needs

To sanction the use of and instil drops in patients as appropriate, involving the use of potentially toxic drugs e.g. Phenylephrine, Cyclopentolate, Tropicamide, Local Anaesthetics.

To undertake extended specialist clinical activities in glaucoma shared care clinics alongside consultant ophthalmologists and other medical staff. The post holder will deliver a broad range of specialised, complex and non-routine optometric work involving skilled diagnostic performance and detailed knowledge of the indications and contra-indications of treatment options in glaucoma. Clinical assessment includes visual field analysis, applanation tonometry, pachymetry, gonioscopy, optic disc assessment and slit lamp anterior segment examination. Treatment plans including prescribing to be identified within agreed protocols with lead consultants.

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