Completion of all the elements and sign off from stage 1 means stage 2 and time for a new assessor. This is much more like a traditional examination process. The College will inform you of a date and time for the four-hour assessment, typically some four to six weeks after completion of the stage 1 process sign off.
The assessment takes place in your practice so your supervisor should make the process known to all staff so that on the day there are no mishaps such as your consulting room being accidentally booked or reception staff sending the stage 2 patient away as they are not in the appointment book.
On the appointed day, a stage 2 assessor (new to you) will arrive and explain the order of proceedings, give you the required paperwork and make sure the patients are prepared. They do not need to see your supervisor. There are three separate sections to the assessment and in between each you are encouraged to take a breather.
Routine assessment
- A patient will be sent from the College agency to arrive at the start of the session.
- They will be presbyopic, have no significant disease or binocular anomaly and need a correction within set parameters – no complex prescription. The assessor will check them before the assessment begins to ensure all meets the requirements.
- You will have 45 minutes to complete a full routine eye examination including recording your findings – the assessor will offer time checks as you request.
- Make sure enough time is left to adequately explain your findings to the patient – it is not just a test of refractive ability.
- Try to make sure you can complete assessment of the most difficult patients well within 45 minutes prior to the assessment and then timing will not seem an issue.
Contact lenses
- A soft contact lens wearer will be sent from the College agency to arrive after one hour into the assessment.
- The assessor will check them before the assessment begins to ensure they meet the requirements. They will ask them to remove one lens.
- You will have 40 minutes to fit a lens to the naked eye (having been given some parameters by the assessor) and then carry out a full aftercare to the eye with the lens in situ.
- Fitting should take less than 15 minutes so allowing at least 25 minutes for the aftercare.
- Hygiene rules!
Over-arching competencies
After another breather, the remaining two hours will be a discussion with the assessor based on records you have prepared, some field plots and clinical images presented by the assessor, and a range of questions and scenarios. The aim is to show you have a good overall competence in the eight competency subject areas.
- You will need to complete a stage 2 patient episode list prior to the assessment – this details the not less than 35 records you need to prepare to cover the required over-arching competencies. It is essential that these records have been checked thoroughly by you and you are fully familiar with them and comfortable discussing them.
- Remember that the best records are often simple with a single management outcome – complex records detailing multiple problems are to be avoided and often do not reflect your activities but rather those of other professionals, such as hospital practitioners.
- The assessor will let you know the 14 they are to sample – this will always include some, such as the low vision patient, a complex contact lens record, three ocular disease records and so on.
- Remember that, unlike your stage 1 assessor, this assessor is not able to coax or offer feedback and may appear quite distant – if you have practiced fielding questions on your prepared records then this should not faze you.
Once the four hours are up, the assessor will still not give away anything but politely leave – you should receive an email report of the outcome in the next day or so. Hopefully this will offer congratulations – if not, you may be asked to retake any of the three individual sections – note that, even if only one or two over-arching competencies are flagged as inadequate, you will have to repeat the whole 14 sample from 35 to 42 prepared process again.
The end is in sight now – the final assessment.
