Reflecting on some of the BIOS work this year, despite the global pandemic and a whole change in the way we work and communicate, has made us focus on what is important for members and how we can support change.
Independent Prescribing – we continue to lobby both through the House of Lords and parliament and have provided evidence for the scoping work being led by NHSE
We have had continued representation on the national working groups for rehabilitation, Low Vision, Vision Screening, ACP, EDI, Public Health, HEE, clinical placement expansion, SIHED, CPD to name but a few and huge thanks goes to the committee members, CAG leads and other volunteers within BIOS who provide such excellent representation for the profession.
Visibility of the profession across social media platforms has grown enormously and Rich Huzzey, BIOS Policy Officer presented some statistics around this at the AGM and visits to our website from the public to find out about orthoptics has been higher than ever before.
BIOJ grows from strength to strength with more manuscripts coming in for review and of course the brilliant news that BIOJ is now PUBMED indexed.
We collaborated with Fight for Sight to offer a £15,000 research grant and applications have just closed with the successful applicant/s being notified in March.
CPD has moved online and BIOS events are recorded for members to access after the event – we have delivered the AGM online and had a record number of attendees so clearly some focus moving into 2021 is delivering CPD and events online to increase access and attendance.
Funding has been received to support work around our Non registered workforce and we are delighted Sue Elliot and Deborah Podmore will be leading on and taking this work forward.
Following a successful bid to the Clinical Placement expansion fund BIOS was awarded £90,000 to restart and grow clinical placement expansion. It is our pleasure to announce that the secondments to support this project are being taken by Elizabeth Lomas and Alice Donachie who will lead on the clinical education resources and Shell Murray who will be the technology implementation lead. We hope that all departments will respond to the call for resources and help.
Applications for orthoptics continues to rise this year and led to full courses at our three HEIs.
Just this week you may have seen the news that the new Pre Registration Masters Orthoptic course has its launch date in January and is being delivered by UCL/Moorfields. This new programme will take students to the point of registration with the HCPC but offers a different entrance to the profession and hoping to attract mature students, more males and those settled in the South to address the recruitment issues that exist.
Following the initial COVID-19 crisis and moving into recovery we looked to the membership to understand what you needed from the professional body and held some listening events. These were incredibly powerful in making changes and to date we have:
- Produced a biweekly ‘round up’ email to highlight important issues or news
- Changed elements of the website for accessibility and added new resources
- Set up heads / leads network across the Mids and East region
- Anna Horwood, BIOS research Director has added content around funding and grant applications and held an audit Q and A to support departments auditing outcomes due to delayed treatment and appointments during the pandemic
- Set up more CPD online in January and held the Glaucoma CAG and the Non registered workforce event recently
- Sam Aitkenhead has delivered TU training online and will be reaching out to all reps in the new year to look to reinstate regional networks across the UK. Sam is also setting up drop-in rep sessions to discuss cases with her or offer support to reps.
- Joe Smith, New Grad Rep, continues to build the new grad network and is planning a New Grad listening event in January to ensure we hear the voice of our early career orthoptists.
- Sonia MacDiarmid is leading the LOOP steering group to focus on Job planning resources, enhanced preceptorship and an online event in the New Year.
To build on this we will set up some more regional / country listening events in February so please look out for those or if you would like a couple of the BIOS team to join your team at a departmental meeting to answer any queries please do let us know.
This year brings particular challenges to our new graduates and current undergraduates with placements being cancelled or severely limited. We will see graduates with a different skill set that we are perhaps used to and of course they will meet their requirements to register but might be a slightly different path to get to that point. Their clinical reasoning and problem-solving skills will be enhanced but they may need particular support in some clinical elements of their practice. As mentioned above we will be developing and producing an enhanced preceptorship guide for managers and graduates to address the support that will be required.
Diversity and access to opportunities remains a high focus for BIOS and you will have seen the funding opportunity for a member of BAME background to apply for a Future Leaders Programme which delivers leadership for associations – this is an excellent opportunity for someone who would like to become involved with BIOS in the future but is unsure of how to start.
The HCPC has the diversity survey open currently so please ensure that you and your team members complete this. This data will eventually be collected as part of our registration and renewal.
There are just 2 asks from us to you
- Please appoint a TU local representative in your team
- Offer band 5 preceptorship roles even at a fixed term if this can be worked through your establishment and budget.
In the new year there will be some BIOS roles being advertised and some great opportunities to develop your career and support the profession.
We would like to finish by sending heartfelt thanks to everyone who offers their time to BIOS to raise our profile, keep our voices heard and develop the profession. Special thanks go to our fellow Trustees, Council Members, TU Advisor, Education and Professional Development Committee, CAG and Non CAG leads and steering groups and the work shadow lead. We could not function without the help from Rich and Sharia as our Business Support Administrator and Policy Officer for BIOS so a huge thank you to them too.
With very best wishes for Christmas and the coming year
Veronica Greenwood (Chair) and Julie Dowdney (Vice Chair)
