Team Communication

Most employees are not licensed optometrists, so you are not expected to know all the details of all that possible medical conditions that a patient might have, nor how they should be treated of course. On the other hand, the more you know the better you will be at your job. You can move from just answering phones and taking notes to truly becoming your patients’ advocate and a true partner with your clinical team. Help them to help your patients! Please ask your supervisor to include clinical education to the whole team if that's not already part of your office culture. It can also be a very valuable activity to occasionally meet as an entire team and just talk about the emergency medical visits from the prior week, and how you all could have made those visits better in terms of quality of care, team communication and efficiency. There's always room for improvement!