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, providing patient instruction, and supporting the fitting of contact lenses.

• 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 - Triage: 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.
• 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, and adhere to Kaiser Foundation Health Plan of Washington documentation standards.
• Clinic - Contact Lens Fitting: Basic principles, fitting procedures, patient instruction, trouble-shooting problems, verification of lenses, cash handling, retail opinions for contact lenses.
• Appointing

• 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.

• 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.