Standards and guidance

This quality standard has been developed by the RCOphth paediatric subcommittee, in conjunction with the College's Quality and Safety Group, to provide a self-assessment tool which focuses on service provision not outcomes. This is not an attempt to assess every aspect of service but try to focus on a small number of key areas. It is not expected that every clinical services will deliver every aspect as described, and the results should be used in conjunction with other methods of quality assessment to support learning and improvement.

Surgical checklists represent a relatively simple strategy for addressing surgical patient safety worldwide. The RCOphth have adapted the WHO surgical checklist for cataract surgery checklist for use within ophthalmic departments.

The Ophthalmic Special Order Products list relates to topical and oral ophthalmic agents. For injectable agents refer to Medusa injectable guide. The list is colour coded as follows: green for specials suitable for initiation by primary care; amber for specials initiated by secondary care and can be continued by primary care; red for specials prescribed by secondary care only.

Advice about performing all intravitreal injection therapy (IVT) as safely as possible, whilst supporting the requirement for innovative and efficient models of care to deal with the continuing increase in demand.

This document outlines some key principles and aims to support national programmes involved in reconfiguration of ophthalmology services for improvement such as the National Elective Care Transformation programme, Getting it Right First Time and Right Care.

NHS Improvement has highlighted two recent incidents of severe visual loss due to delayed diagnosis of optic neuropathy from ethambutol. In 2015, 5758 cases of tuberculosis were notified in England and ethambutol is frequently prescribed in its initial phase of treatment.  Although ethambutol optic neuropathy is rare, members are strongly reminded of the possibility of this cause of preventable sight loss and to ensure that current guidance is followed.

Dry eye disease is a global public-health problem with significant impact on quality of life. Serum Eye Drops (SED) contain many nutritional factors that aid therapeutics. Across the NHS There is variation in practice, inequality of access to SED service and no regulated monitoring outcome. This guideline sets out defined criteria for the use of Serum Eye Drops, monitoring of clinical and patient-reported outcomes to improve patient morbidity and standards of care.

Dry eye disease is a global public-health problem with significant impact on quality of life. Serum Eye Drops (SED) contain many nutritional factors that aid therapeutics. Across the NHS There is variation in practice, inequality of access to SED service and no regulated monitoring outcome. This guideline sets out defined criteria for the use of Serum Eye Drops, monitoring of clinical and patient-reported outcomes to improve patient morbidity and standards of care.

Dry eye disease is a global public-health problem with significant impact on quality of life. Serum Eye Drops (SED) contain many nutritional factors that aid therapeutics. Across the NHS There is variation in practice, inequality of access to SED service and no regulated monitoring outcome. This guideline sets out defined criteria for the use of Serum Eye Drops, monitoring of clinical and patient-reported outcomes to improve patient morbidity and standards of care.