COVID-19 clinical guidance
Our regularly updated clinical and professional guidance is cited by NHS England and all the UK health authorities, and has been developed to ensure that you can practise safely and effectively through all phases of the pandemic.
All of the UK is currently in the Green phase
You should now follow our updated Guidance for Professional Practice and your nation’s infection prevention and control guidance for healthcare settings.
Summary
We have summarised our COVID-19 guidance below, but more detailed guidance on how to adapt your practice during the red and amber phases can be found in our COVID-19 pandemic guidance.
To help our members understand how each Nation’s tiers/levels relate to The College’s red and amber phase we have reviewed and updated the definitions. In order to enter The College’s Red phase a Nation’s government or health system should specify a restriction of primary care services. Eye care and routine sight tests are an essential public health function, which should continue to be available for the public to access wherever possible, providing it is safe to deliver.
All of the UK is currently in the Green phase
You should now follow our updated Guidance for Professional Practice and your nation’s infection prevention and control guidance for healthcare settings.
During both the red and amber phases of the pandemic practices should:
- Put appropriate infection control, practice modifications, and social distancing procedures in place
- Ensure there is telephone/video review to determine COVID-19 status and level of eyecare need
- Provide services remotely where possible and in the patient’s best interests
- Ask the patient to attend the practice alone where possible and reduce the number of people in the consulting room
- Ask patients to wear a face covering where possible
- Conduct a risk assessment
- Keep up to date with guidance published by UK governments.
Optometrists should:
- Wear PPE if seeing patients face to face
- Use alternatives to aerosol generating procedures (microblepharoexfoliation or Alger brush) until the green phase
- Adapt their routine to reduce close contact with patients and streamline consultations to only do tests that are clinically necessary, rather than ‘blanket testing’ all patients in a category. Annotate the record accordingly
- Make it clear on the record what adjustments have been made to the routine or decision making
- Keep up to date with guidance published by UK governments.
What this means:
- When a government or health service suspends routine primary care due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Services provided
- Face to face essential, urgent or emergency eyecare, and essential contact lens practice only, dependent on local or national protocols
- Domiciliary care as per local protocols
- Emergency and urgent referrals only
- All other services provided remotely (also see patient information)
What this means:
- Ongoing COVID-19 pandemic with restrictions in place, but primary care remains open for routine services. Primary care services continue to enable the prioritisation of emergency/urgent and essential care on a needs and symptoms-led basis.
Services provided
- Face to face needs and/or symptoms led eyecare and contact lens practice as prioritised by a clinician dependent on local or national protocols. For example see Patient Risk Stratification Tool (Amber phase)
- Meet outstanding eye care needs as capacity permits (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales)
- Domiciliary care as per local protocols
- HES referrals as per local protocols
What this means:
- Social distancing requirements removed. COVID-19 related PPE is no longer required*. Prioritisation of care based on each nation’s regular local protocols.
Services provided
- Resume all services on an open access basis.
- Re-introduction of aerosol generating procedures
*You should follow local public health advice. You should wear a mask if there is a local public health requirement to wear one.