Optometry Programme Team (School of Health Sciences. Led by William Holmes and Niall McLoughlin)

Since the Faculty restructure in 2016 this team has reviewed and refreshed the curriculum, employed senior clinical teachers and focused on linking theoretical content with clinical practice. They brought in independent Prescribing Optometrists to help deliver 2 Ocular Pharmacology units which led to external examiners commenting on their “students’ excellent working knowledge of diagnostic drugs” and their graduates success rate in Stage 1 assessment going from 80% to 96%.

When COVID-19 hit the team worked to ensure all remaining teaching was delivered successfully online and live video technology was used to sign off final year core competencies and final year clinical assessments.

For the 20/21 academic year the team completely restructured the curriculum into blocks of 4 weeks teaching followed by 1 week of summative assessments. These blocks provided opportunity for the team to collaborate with each other and ensured flexibility during the pandemic. They also incorporated student feedback into the design and delivery of later blocks. The team had weekly meetings to share knowledge and experience of delivering teaching online and show and tell sessions for new technology and software. Senior staff were also available to mentor those less confident in teaching online. The team also created a COVID safe clinical teaching environment and shared their best practice with the rest of the Faculty. Thanks to the team’s hard work, all their 2020 and 2021 graduates have met General Optical Council requirements to carry out their pre-registration placements and external examiners commented on the success of their teaching blocks.