Glaucoma TEMPO is a multidisciplinary, cross-institutional team from the University of Manchester and Manchester Royal Eye Hospital. There are three optometrist members and a consultant ophthalmologist at its core, with a wealth of academic and clinical experience between them. Over the past six years they have designed and deliver a Professional Certificate in Glaucoma. This is a short course for eyecare professionals who are trained to detect and monitor glaucoma, which is a leading cause of preventable blindness. This upskilling of optometrists improves patient care and reduces the significant NHS burden and health inequalities. During the pandemic (which created a huge mismatch between demand and supply of services) they joined forces with Primary Eyecare Services to upskill the Greater Manchester NHS eyecare workforce.
Before this partnership only 13 optometrists took part in a scheme that was available to half a million people in central Manchester. There are now 57 optometrists serving three million people and another 26 are about to graduate, an increase of 300%. The students they have trained have increased hospital capacity and improved patient outcomes. They evaluate the clinical effectiveness of these schemes and the published evidence influences NHS commissioners nationwide. The research won the prestigious College of Optometrist’s Philip Cole Prize.
This work also informed NICE guidelines, which now recommend all suspect glaucoma cases must be referred through referral filtering schemes, of which Manchester’s was the first. They are also making an environmental difference; the glaucoma monitoring scheme allows patients to be seen closer to home. They discovered that, in 89% of cases, the patient’s trip from their home address to the local optometrist was shorter than the trip to the eye hospital. This means that sending patients to their local practice only has one third of the carbon footprint compared to sending them to secondary care, representing a huge CO2 saving if this were replicated nationwide.