An academic and glaucoma practitioner has described how the roles optometrists play in glaucoma care have evolved over the course of his career.
City St George’s, University of London senior lecturer, Dr Peter Campbell, shared with OT that when he started working as an optometrist in the community, optometrists would primarily refer patients to ophthalmologists for the detection and management of glaucoma.
“Within my career I have seen the development of optometrists taking on more extended roles across different aspects of ophthalmology,” he said.
“Certainly, within glaucoma, we have shown ourselves to work very effectively and reliably alongside our colleagues in multi-disciplinary teams,” Campbell highlighted.
He added that optometrists are well placed to identify potential glaucoma cases among people who may not be accessing other healthcare services.
“We can pick up the condition at an earlier stage,” Campbell said.
Read more from Dr Peter Campbell within The cover story for OT’s December/January edition
He highlighted that detecting pathology and performing some elements of decision making in the community has a range of benefits, including reducing the cost of repeated tests, avoiding delays to patient care, and minimising false positive referrals.
Campbell shared that enhanced communication with colleagues across the NHS means optometrists are able to make appropriate clinical decisions and receive guidance from others on those decisions.
Campbell’s comments come following the release of new independent economic analysis that calls for the implementation of national pathways for a range of clinical services within optometry.
The Key Interventions to Transform Eye Care & Eye Health report, which was supported by AOP, Fight for Sight, Primary Eyecare Services and Roche Products Ltd, finds that investing in primary eye care has the potential to deliver £98m in net benefits for the NHS.
Campbell shared with OT that consideration needs to be given to the level of reimbursement if national clinical pathways are rolled out.
“There has to be an appropriate allocation of funds to enable optometrists to take on these roles,” he said.
Comments (1)
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Nicholas Rumney12 December 2024
We do need to move towards appropriately qualified optometrists initiating treatment they are presently excluded from. The diploma structure for Higher Qualifications means that the highest is pretty much excluded from optometrist in community practice as too much high level high risk cases are required to be seen. This works fine for HES optometrist career pathway but isn't applicable at community levels for an enormous number of lower risk patients.
Other countries with sophisticated optometry practising at full scope (USA, Australia etc) manage this.
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