Clinical skills to be assessed in PCT project

Wakefield LOC hopes as many optometrists as possible will join in the clinical baseline assessment being organised by the primary care trusts in the area.
A member of the clinical governance team, which will be assessing the project, will be available at next Tuesday's Wakefield LOC meeting (see Diary, page 6), and one of the scheme's organisers has written to optical practitioners in Wakefield and its locality explaining what is happening.
The main purpose of clinical baseline assessments in primary care is for practices, PCGs and health authorities to take stock of their existing activities which are relevant to clinical governance so they can identify priority areas for development.
Laura Elliott, head of continuous improvement at Eastern Wakefield PCT, has told the Yorkshire-based optometrists: 'We are hoping to carry out the assessments over the next few months. Following this we will hold an event for optometrists and their teams to feed back the overall results, celebrate good practice and provide support on elements of clinical governance identified from the assessments.
'The two PCTs and the LOC have jointly developed a baseline assessment tool to enable you to increase awareness about the different elements of clinical governance and identify your strengths and areas for improvement. A member of the clinical governance team can provide support and facilitation to you and members of your practice, to work through the assessment. This will also enable the PCTs to identity common areas to support, gather notable practice data and learn about optometry.'
Optometrists have the opportunity to carry out the baseline assessment themselves, or have a member of the clinical governance team visit their practice to carry out a one-hour evaluation.
www.wakefieldoptometry. org.uk