A new document released by the College of Optometrists has set out its strategy and priorities for the next five years. Titled ‘Inspiring and Supporting Excellence: Our Strategy 2020-2025’, the statement focused on four strategic areas the College indicated would define its work in the future.
The four areas of focus have been listed as defining and inspiring excellence in optometry, enabling optometrists to maximise their skills and develop their careers, representing and amplifying the expert voices of optometrists and embedding insight and evidence at the centre of the profession.
Introducing the document, the College said: ‘As this strategy was being developed, the Covid-19 pandemic took hold, creating significant challenges in the professional and personal lives of every optometrist in the UK. While the immediate implications for practice are known, the long-term impact of the pandemic on eye health and care is still uncertain at the time of writing. What we are certain of is that the College must lead the optometry community in its response to the immediate challenges of the pandemic and through the phases of recovery.’
The College added its new strategy ‘sets out a bold framework for the next five years, built upon four pillars of activity, each of which looks at the immediate, medium and long-term.’
Defining Excellence
The College’s strategy for defining and inspiring excellence in optometry included an immediate priority to develop clinical governance for new models of primary and secondary care that have emerged during the pandemic. This commitment to supporting the profession through the pandemic was supported by another immediate priority; a commitment to continue producing guidance on the safe delivery of primary eye care during the pandemic.
By 2023, the College explained that it would like to clearly define its own role in pre-registration education following the outcome of the GOC’s Education Strategic Review (ESR). The ESR drew criticism from the College throughout 2020, with a commitment to ensuring it achieves meaningful improvements and reflects the impact of the pandemic listed as an immediate priority.
In the long term, the College stated it would like to have achieved the royal title for itself and its members while developing its role in practice-based learning and education funding models.
Career development
The College’s second strategic pillar explained that quickly upskilling qualified optometrists to meet the changing models of care was an immediate focus for the College in terms of career development. It said this could be achieved through reviewing the scope of the independent prescriber qualification and developing more capacity for optometrists to qualify. This was supplemented by a commitment to providing integrated professional development and wellbeing support to members, including a focus on resources for locums.
By 2025, the College hoped that it would be ‘defining optometry’s approach to professional development and encouraging optometrists to broaden their scope of practice’, having built on medium term goals to expand its portfolio of continual professional development resources and review its higher qualifications.
Representing optometry
Ensuring that the skills of optometrists are highly valued was high on the College’s agenda, with immediate priorities listed that included reviewing funding for primary and secondary eye care services and leading a review of the basic sight test to determine its evolution in response to the pandemic.
The College explained that it would focus on collaborating with partners in the short term to ensure that changes to the optometrists’ scope of practice during the pandemic are supported by the development of new models of care. Reducing demand on hospital-based eye care services through the utilisation of optometrists’ skills, and improving the recognition of these skills among employers, the wider health profession, policy-makers and the public was also listed as a priority.
Centring evidence
The strategic document explained that increasing the capacity in optical research through targeted funding, as well as evaluating and demonstrating the impact of research funded by the College was a long-term goal. This was supported by a short-term goal of identifying research opportunities that could support the expansion of optometric practice and optometry-led eye care services across the UK.
A commitment to centring evidence also included a commitment to increasing the College’s collection and use of data to better assess the opinions and feelings of its members and improve diversity in the organisation.
