Latest News from Hampshire LOC – 25 November 2022

27 November 2022

Glaucoma in Hampshire

November has been a busy time for Hampshire LOC and many performers in the area as we’ve turned our focus to Glaucoma.

On the 8th November we were delighted to arrange a WOPEC OSCE for 11 performers in the region all of whom passed the accreditation. Well done to all who sat this OSCE and many thanks to Boots Opticians in Romsey for hosting the evening.

At this same OSCE our very own Louise Nicklin took the opportunity to start her journey to becoming a WOPEC assessor. Good luck Louise!

One week later the LOC, alongside Primary Eyecare Services (PES), hosted an evening webinar to officially relaunch Glaucoma Repeat Readings (GRR) and Glaucoma Enhanced Referral Service (GERS) across North Hampshire, West Hampshire, and Southampton areas. Nish Srikantha, consultant ophthalmologist at Hampshire Hospitals delivered a fantastic presentation entitled ‘Management of glaucoma in the modern age’.

The webinar forms one third of the trio of requirements in order for performers to provide GERS in the community.

Coming soon (January 2023) patients will be discharged from Southampton University Hospital for glaucoma monitoring. The requirement to delivery this service is Level 1 glaucoma WOPEC and the Glaucoma OSCE (Level 2 Glaucoma WOPEC).

The slides by PES can be found – here.

If you are interested in providing all three glaucoma services in the community all you need to do is complete the Level 1 glaucoma WOPEC accreditation, complete the glaucoma OSCE (Level 2 glaucoma WOPEC) and attend a live online local accreditation event.

To access WOPEC Level 1 – email isilk@hampshireloc.org.uk requesting a WOPEC code for glaucoma.

The LOC are arranging an OSCE for 01 February 2023 in Portsmouth and for those who have completed WOPEC level 1 accreditation the OSCE will be available to book shortly – watch out for communications.

Please ensure your WOPEC level 1 is still current if you wish to complete the OSCE in February.

For those who have WOPEC Level 1&2 but who were unable to attend the evening webinar on the 15th November, we will be holding another event in the new year – watch out for communications.

User account changes to NHSmail

NHSmail users in optometry practices are strongly advised to regularly log in to their accounts. NHS Digital will be making changes to the NHSmail account lifecycle from early December 2022 to address the security risk to the platform caused by inactive accounts.

Both the ‘active’ and ‘inactive’ periods are being reduced to 30 days and accounts that remain unused during this period will become eligible for deletion after 60 days. During this time, users have a further 30 days to get their account restored before it is deleted permanently.

If you are going on long term leave, please ask the shared mailbox owner to mark your account as disabled – this stops them being deleted for 18 months. When you return you must ask for it to be re-enabled.

Appropriate use of re-test codes webinars

NHS Business Services Authority (BSA) is running a series of webinars covering the appropriate use of re-test codes for General Ophthalmic Services (GOS) sight tests, with specific clinical examples of how the frequency of sight tests recalls should be applied for different types of GOS patents in England.

Attendance provides one interactive CPD point.

Each event lasts an hour and the dates and times of upcoming sessions are:

• Monday 5 December at 12:30pm
• Tuesday 13 December at 8:30am

Book your place on one of the GOS webinars here

LaserVision ‘Controversies in Ophthalmology’ CPD Event –  08 Dec 22

LaserVision are hosting a 3 CPD point event on Thursday 8th December 2022 in Winchester.

LaserVision consultants Nick Maycock, Nish Srikantha and Rakesh Jayaswal will present a rotation of controversial cases to challenge your thinking and promote discussion on how they could be managed and whether referral is appropriate.

Further information and booking details can be found here.