Optical Care Assistant (OCA)

at  The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust

To work as a member of the team to deliver direct patient assessment and care under the direction of senior staff members in Ophthalmology.
To liaise with the other optical care assistants, visual fields technicians, health care assistants, Orthoptists, Optometrists, Ophthalmologists, Nursing staff, other health professionals.
To liaise with non-clinical staff in the Eye-Unit such as the medical secretaries, reception and administrative staff.
To provide technical support, following relevant training and competency assessment if required, to the Ophthalmology service and other hospital departments and ensure that diagnostic tests (Visual fields, Biometry, Fundus Photography, Corneal Topography, Optical coherence tomography, tonometry etc) requested by the Clinicians for patients are carried out in a timely and accurate manner.
To carry out Ophthalmology specific diagnostic testing and assessment; visual acuity, intraocular pressure (IOP), field of vision (VF/Goldmann), scans on OCT/Heidelberg, OPTOS, Biometry, Pentacam and other newly introduced equipment’s in the department. Provide specialist visual assessments for patients after training with Orthoptists, under care of the trust and to relay this information to the medical Ophthalmology team.
Be able to identify change and escalate; if notice significant change/deterioration in patients visual acuity, scans, VF- have unexpected variations, to immediately escalate to nurse in-charge, document and seek further advice from either senior staff and Doctor/consultant following departments protocol.
The Princess Alexandra Hospital NHS Trust (PAHT) provides a full range of general acute, outpatient and diagnostic services at The Princess Alexandra Hospital in Harlow, the Herts and Essex Hospital in Bishop’s Stortford, and St Margaret’s Hospital in Epping.
We employ 3,500 staff and serve a local population of around 350,000 people living in west Essex and east Hertfordshire, centred on the M11 corridor and the towns of Harlow, Bishop’s Stortford and Epping. Our extended catchment area incorporates a population of up to 500,000 and includes the areas of Hoddesdon, Cheshunt and Broxbourne in Hertfordshire.
‘ Please see the attached job description and person specification, available to download at any time.

Please refer the Job description for details