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Optometry

The Optometry Department provides a specialist optometric role within and alongside the Ophthalmology service at Oxford Eye Hospital. Some services are available at clinics around the county.

Optometry services

• Complex refraction
• Children's Rapid Access Clinic (CRAC) and triage service
• Routine and specialist spectacle dispensing
• Medical contact lenses
• Adult and paediatric low vision
• Visual fields
• Glaucoma shared care
  Some of our optometrists work in optometrist-led glaucoma clinics linked to the Consultant Ophthalmologist clinics. They measure visual fields thickness of the nerve fibre layer, and assess the optic disc and eye pressures.
• Colour vision
• Ultrasound
  Ultrasound is used to examine the eye when there is some opacity, preventing examination using the usual lights, and to monitor moles at the back of the eye. A small camera placed on the closed eyelid takes an image of the back of the eye. The scan is painless and takes a few minutes.
• Visual electrodiagnostics
  Visual electrodiagnostics measures the small electrical signals within the eye, and between the eye and brain, which occur in response to stimuli such as a flash of light or a moving pattern.
• Private patients
  Private patients are seen within the Optometry Department following referral from a Consultant Ophthalmologist.  All of the services carried out by the Department are available to private patients. 
  
  Further details are available from the Secretary: 01865 234740.
• Teaching and research
  Optometry staff teach various professional groups, including pre-registration optometrists, medical students, orthoptists and ophthalmologists. The department is also involved in several research projects.

About the Optometry Department

The team consists of optometrists, dispensing opticians, optometric assistants and support staff.

Hospital optometrists have an extended role compared to community or high street optometrists, and work in specialist clinics including contact lens, low vision, paediatric and glaucoma, as well as providing refraction services.

Patients are referred to the Optometry Department by the Oxford Eye Hospital, other ophthalmology units or their GP. We also take referrals from community optometrists for low vision and contact lens fitting for keratoconus, a condition affecting about 1 in 500 of the population causing the cornea to weaken, get thinner and change shape.

Low vision and refraction (adults' and children's) clinics are held at:

• Oxford Eye Hospital
• Horton General Hospital
• Abingdon
• Bicester (children only)
• Didcot (children only)
• Wantage
• Witney.

Contact us

• Optometry Department
  Oxford Eye Hospital
  West Wing (Level LG1)
  John Radcliffe Hospital
  Headley Way
  Oxford OX3 9DU
• Optometry: 01865 234740
  9.00am - 5.00pm
• Email: patricia.popplestone@ouh.nhs.uk