Optical Care Assistant (OCA)

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.
Our Values
The Princess Alexandra Promise to our patients as identified by our 3 values which will contribute to improving our patient experiences:
Patient at heart - Always holding the patient and their wellbeing at the centre of our thoughts and efforts
Everyday excellence - Sharing and celebrating our successes, being honest when we get it wrong, giving us the ability to learn from both
Creative collaboration - Knowing strength comes from diversity, we combine our experiences, skills and talents, working together to find new and better ways to care
The Trust believes in investing in all our staff and rewarding high standards of care whilst building for excellence and in return we expect our staff to uphold the Trust values to the highest level.