Ophthalmic Assistant

As an Ophthalmic Assistant-Certified, you will provide technical and patient care support in a clinic or on the phone as a member of the Eye Care team. Your responsibilities will include performing measurement and evaluation tests, conducting specified procedures, and providing patient instruction. You will also act as a triage point for urgent, emergent, and general Eye Care needs, and may support fitting of contact lenses and provide patient instruction.

• Anticipate and recognize changes in patients' eye health status and needs for eye care.
• Take patient histories, including presenting complaint, past ocular history, family history, systemic illness, past and present medications, allergies, and drug reactions.
• Use the Eye Care triage process to provide telephone consultation to patients, determining priorities of patient care based on essential patient needs and available resources.
• Perform clinical exams, including basic testing skills such as measuring and recording acuity, color vision testing, lensometry, A-scan biometry, Exophthalmometry Amsler Grid, Schirmer, Tests Evaluation of Pupils, Estimation of Anterior chamber depth, and Visual field evaluation.
• Perform patient services procedures, including ocular dressings and shields, drug delivery, spectacle principles, assisting patients, minor surgery assist, and instruction.
• Maintain instruments, including acuity projectors, ophthalmoscopes, retinoscopes, lensometers, perimeters, tangent screen, phoropters, slit lamps, ultrasound, keratometers, lenses, tonometers, muscle light, special instruments, and surgical instruments.
• Provide patient care, including encouraging patient compliance with established therapeutic and medical treatment, promoting patient self-care responsibility for meeting their own eye health needs, and adhering to Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington documentation standards.
• Provide a safe environment for each patient and adhere to Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington safety standards.

• Registered Medical Assistant (Washington) within 2 months of hire.
• Ophthalmic Assistant Certificate required at hire from The Joint Commission on Allied Health Personnel in Ophthalmology.
• Basic Life Support required at hire.
• Customer service skills.
• Computer experience in a MS Windows environment; keyboarding skills.
• General medical knowledge of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, anatomy, physiology, systemic diseases, ocular diseases, ocular emergencies, and metric conversion fundamentals of microbial control.

• Experience working with contact lens patients and products.
• Experience working in an ophthalmology or optometry practice.
• Graduate of an accredited medical assistant, ophthalmic assistant, or allied health professional program.