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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:
- 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;
- Ensures that all staff members involved in the delegation and supervision of clinical tasks are aware who retains overall clinical responsibility for the patient;
- Monitors progress of new staff in meeting the requirements of their role;
- Has appropriate systems in place to address and manage poor clinical and professional performance;
- 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;
- Provides students with information about who to speak to in the practice if they have an issue or query.