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Standards for optical businesses

3.3 Staff are adequately supervised

Why is this Standard necessary?

Optical businesses have a responsibility to ensure that staff are adequately supervised, where appropriate, and staff have a key role to play in the formal supervision of pre-registration students as part of the education pathway. It is important to make sure that all staff – regulated or not – have access to the supervision and support they need to provide good patient care.

The standards for supervision and delegation arrangements are set out in Standard 9 of the Standards of Practice for Optometrists and Dispensing Opticians.

The GOC supervision policy for pre-registration students is set out in the GOC Quality Assurance handbooks.

To achieve this, your business:

  1. Ensures that only staff with sufficient levels of qualification and experience act as supervisors, and require them to be in a position to oversee the work undertaken and ready to intervene if necessary to protect patients;
  2. Ensures that all staff members involved in the delegation and supervision of clinical tasks are aware who retains overall clinical responsibility for the patient;
  3. Monitors progress of new staff in meeting the requirements of their role;
  4. Has appropriate systems in place to address and manage poor clinical and professional performance;
  5. Ensures that students have protected time for supervised learning, where the business has entered into an agreement to provide clinical training in practice as part of the education pathway;
  6. Provides students with information about who to speak to in the practice if they have an issue or query.
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3.2 Staff are suitably trained, qualified and registered
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3.4 Staff collaborate with others, where appropriate