Ophthalmic Assistant

As a key member of the Eye Care team, you will provide technical and patient care support in a clinic or via phone. Your responsibilities will include performing measurement and evaluation tests, conducting specified procedures, and providing patient instruction. You will also serve as a triage point for urgent, emergent, and general Eye Care needs.

• Patient Assessment: Anticipate and recognize changes in patients' eye health status and needs for eye care.
• Clinic only - History taking: Presenting complaint/history of presenting illness, past ocular history, family history, systemic illness, past and present, medications, allergies, and drug reactions.
• Phone only - Using the Eye Care triage process, provide telephone consultation to patients and determine priorities of patient care based on essential patient needs and available resources.
• Clinical Exam (clinic only)
• Basic Testing Skills: methods of measuring/recording acuity, color vision testing, lensometry, A-scan biometry, Exophthalmometry Amsler Grid, Schirmer, Tests Evaluation of Pupils, Estimation of Anterior chamber depth, Visual field evaluation.
• Perform Patient Services Procedures: Ocular dressings and shields, Drug delivery, spectacle principles, assisting patient, minor surgery assist and instruction.
• Instrument Maintenance: Acuity projectors, ophthalmoscopes, retinoscopes, lensometers, perimeters, tangent screen, phoropters, slit lamps, ultrasound, keratometers, lenses, tonometers, muscle light, special instruments, surgical instruments.
• Patient Care: Encourage patient compliance with established therapeutic and medical treatment. Promote patient self-care responsibility for meeting their own eye health needs. Adhere 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.
• Clinic - Basic principles, fitting procedures, patient instruction, trouble-shooting problems, verification of lenses, cash handling, retail opinions for contact lenses.
• Appointing:
  • Clinic - May check-in or make follow-up appointments.
  • Phone - Provides appropriate schedule guidance through use of technical skill and judgment along with established protocols.

• Experience: N/A
• Education: High School Diploma or General Education Development (GED) required.
• License, Certification, Registration: 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.
• Additional Requirements: 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.
• Preferred Qualifications: 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.