Special Schools Eye Care Service Clinician Training - SeeAbility

Training to equip clinicians to provide optimal eye care in the special school setting. Can be taken as a standalone CPD module or as part of the MSc in clinical optometry.

Government has committed to the commissioning of eye care services in all special schools by local integrated care boards (ICBs). This training is designed for providers of this service.

Elements of the course are intended to be completed before you begin your own service delivery, with completion of practical elements within 6 months of commencing your own clinical work in a special school setting.

Teaching on the module will be carried out by highly experienced SeeAbility clinicians with content and quality oversight from City, St George’s, University of London. SeeAbility will assign you a clinical mentor and arrange and supervise your clinical placements.The course should be completed within 12months.

As part of the course and prior to running any service you will engage in the following learning activities

• 5 hours of asynchronous learning (recorded lectures which you can listen to in your own time)
• 2 x 1.5 hour synchronous evening group case-based discussions (online via Teams or Zoom)
• Clinical placement day in a special school with a mentor
• Essential specified background reading
• Within 6 months of commencing service provision you will undertake the following learning activities
• 1:1 tutorial/ review of first clinic, records and reporting case by case with mentor
• Preparation of 10 anonymised case studies (developed with support from mentor)

Who is it for?

Optometrists, orthoptists & dispensing opticians who wish to provide eye care in special schools. Will enable clinicians to gain additional experience and optimise their clinical outcomes, provide practical eye and vision advice and dissemination of that advice to the multi-disciplinary team around the child. The aim being to optimise visual and quality of life outcomes for special school students

Timetable

Rolling start dates, contact SSECtraining@seeability.org for further information

Benefits

15 credits towards MSc Clinical Optometry

6 interactive GOC accredited CPD points for case discussions

5  non-interactive lecture GOC accredited CPD

Remaining hours as self -declared CPD

On successful completion of this module, you will be expected to be able to:

Knowledge and understanding:

*            Formulate in-depth knowledge of delivering eye care services as contractors, tailored around the needs of children/young people with learning disabilities, autism or both

*            Critically synthesise current research for children/young adults with learning disability and or autism, demographic’s eye health

*            Critically evaluate various investigative techniques and modifications for examining children/young people with learning disabilities, autism or both

*            Evaluate and critically assess appropriate safeguarding protocols and apply as appropriate

*            Evaluate an in-depth understanding of appropriate service administration and apply as appropriate

Skills:

*            Synthesise complex information from a number of sources in order to develop your overall knowledge and understanding of how to deliver appropriate eye care services as contractors, tailored around the needs of children/young people with learning disabilities, autism or both.

*            Formulate appropriate record keeping and report writing for children/young people with learning disabilities, autism or both

*            Communicate effectively with patients, relatives, carers and health and educational professionals in complex environments

*            Choose and use appropriate investigative techniques to diagnose and manage children/young adults with learning disability and/or autism

*            Refer and manage children/young adults with learning disability and/or autism appropriately

*            Operate with an overview of the issues governing best practice

Values and attitudes:

*            Show appropriate professional attitude towards patients, their guardians/carers, colleagues and other health and social care professionals

*            Work collaboratively with the school and associated health/education/social care professionals

The assessment will consist of three written assessments. You must pass all three components with a pass mark of 50% or higher to be awarded a module pass.

Assessment 1: There will be an online MCQ assessment testing your understanding of the key concepts within the asynchronous lecture material.

Assessment 2: Clinical portfolio: which will test your ability to analyse and reflect on a series of clinic results which are seen during your clinical shadowing day with SeeAbility.

Assessment 3: Ten anonymised case studies. Each clinician is expected to present and discuss these case records with their SeeAbility mentor and receive formative feedback before submitting a copy of these anonymised records. Each case record will have a reflection section and a maximum word count of 750 words (not including the case record).

Credits

This course is worth 15 credits toward eligible programmes.

Professional qualification in optometry, dispensing optics or orthoptics.

Completion of LOCSU Easy Eye Care learning Disability and autism modules

English requirements

You will need a good level of spoken and written English to enrol on this course.

For those students whose first language is not English the following qualification is also required:

• IELTS: 7.0

This will be provided as part of the course handbook

The course is designed to meet the requirements of the Framework for special schools eye care and is based upon a competency framework developed by an NHSEngland hosted multi-professional working group