“Our inaugural cohort of students graduating is a real milestone for us”

The University of the Highlands and Islands (UHI) has celebrated a new milestone as students from the inaugural cohort of its BSc Optometry degree have graduated from the programme this month.

The four-year undergraduate optometry degree launched in September 2020 with its first intake of students.

Alison MacPherson, head of optometry at UHI, told OT: “Our inaugural cohort of students graduating is a real milestone for us.”

"We’re really proud to have our first cohort graduating, both for the students who have worked really, really hard, but also for the staff and wider university. At the end of the day, we are only the second optometry programme in Scotland, and the first new programme in Scotland for many years.”

Opening as a new programme

“What makes this milestone even more special is that these students started on this journey right in the middle of COVID-19,” MacPherson explained.

The course welcomed its first intake in September 2020 and, for the first year, students were taught virtually.

Reflecting on this period, she acknowledged: “When you are planning a new programme, there are lots of things you look at and risk analyses you carry out. The one thing we hadn’t factored in was a global pandemic.”

The department has carried out a lot of work to raise awareness of the degree and build relationships with external stakeholders.

This included engaging and training placement providers, as students undertake a placement during each of the four years of the degree.

“Full credit needs to go to all the optometry team here at UHI, because of the amount of work that they have put in," MacPherson said.

This included getting the course up and running, but in also taking student feedback and making changes. MacPherson explained: “As with anything new, you constantly review it, refine it, and make improvements.”

Supporting the optometrists’ journey

“Everyone here has a real passion for what they do. We have a mixture of skillsets in the department, in terms of expertise and background. A lot of the team still work in clinical practice, bringing real life, day-to-day optometry experience,” she added.

Reflecting on the successes of the new course, MacPherson told OT: “What I am most proud of is the students and seeing them go on a journey.”

The department was able to get to know students well as the first cohort was quite small.

Final-year students complete a placement period of 11 weeks in community optometry practices.

“When they came back, it was fantastic to see how they were developing, how excited they were about what they had seen while they were out in practice, and how they had honed their skills,” MacPherson said.

Addressing gaps in the workforce

UHI is an integrated university of further and higher education, operating in a collegiate model.

“The university has always existed to recognise the needs of the areas it serves and to create opportunity for people in the area,” MacPherson said.

Pointing to workforce challenges across healthcare disciplines in rural Scotland, particularly in the North and North East, she explained that the optometry degree was developed to address this challenge and meet the need for eye care services.

Outreach projects to engage schools and young people have been ongoing, in order to raise awareness of the opportunity to study optometry within the region.

Find out more about UHI’s approach to addressing workforce challenges in OT’s feature Eye care, everywhere.

Preparing for change

It was announced earlier this month that the optometry degree has gained full approval from the General Optical Council (GOC).

The university welcomed another intake of students onto the BSc honours undergraduate in September.

Following changes to the GOC’s education and training requirements, universities are rolling out Master of Optometry (MOptom) qualifications.

In Scotland, the MOptom courses will run over five years and incorporate independent prescribing (IP), enabling graduates to register as IP optometrists.

A Memorandum of Understanding was established between the Scottish Government, NHS Education for Scotland (NES), Glasgow Caledonian University (GCU), and UHI, to support the reform of the optometry programmes.

“The next phase for us will be transitioning to the MOptom with IP and embracing all the changes that have come about in optometry education,” MacPherson said.

The university is working with NES on the placements that will make up a key aspect of the new course, as well as the fifth year of the programme. This process has also facilitated collaboration with colleagues from the optometry school at GCU.

Lessons from undergraduate

“Optometry has changed a lot over the years,” she reflected, adding: “Fundamentally, I think the foundations for transitioning to the MOptom were already there for us.”

New approaches to learning and development had already been incorporated into the BSc honours degree, including a greater degree of patient contact earlier in the course.

The course currently runs as a spiral programme – whereby a concept is introduced and built on each year.

“The aim is to have graduates that are very able to differentially diagnose and make sound clinical management decisions, which is the way optometry is shifting,” MacPherson shared.

With optometry a first port of call service in Scotland, it is important that students are equipped to be able to make decisions in clinical practice for both routine cases, and ocular emergencies, she suggested.

The core of the current programme is a problem-based model of learning. This is a concept used in medical education supporting students to learn approaches through cases.

“Students are presented with a series of cases that they research and effectively pull apart to work out their approach and what they need to prioritise,” MacPherson said.

Incorporating the IP training into the undergraduate programme will mark the biggest change for the department.

MacPherson commented: “Although we don’t currently run an IP postgraduate qualification, we still incorporate a lot of the theoretical content into the undergraduate programme to prepare students for that stepping stone later on in their careers.”

As the department celebrates the graduation of its first cohort, prepares to welcome the 2024 intake, and develops plans for the MOptom, MacPherson emphasised the passion of the UHI optometry team and the support of the wider university.

“It’s been a great journey. We couldn’t have done it without all the parts that fit together to make these things happen,” she concluded.