Career prospects

Graduates in Orthoptics and Ophthalmic Care are responsible for the organisation, planning and quality of the professional acts carried out within the scope of their duties; they carry out their professional activities in public or private health care facilities, on a salaried or freelance basis.
On 16 May 2013, the Italian Association of Orthoptists and Ophthalmic Assistants (AIOrAO) published the first edition of the Core Competence of the Assistant Orthoptist in Ophthalmology in which the competence standards for professional practice are set out. In this document, it is clearly emphasised that the professionalism of a healthcare worker is defined by three fundamental characteristics: the possession of up-to-date theoretical knowledge (knowing) the possession of technical or manual skills (doing) the possession of communication and interpersonal skills (being).
The core certified competences are the following:
technical skills and theoretical knowledge
professional behaviour
observation skills
interpersonal skills
integration/collaboration skills
technical/organisational and planning skills

Graduates are health professionals who are responsible for the tasks laid down in the Ministerial Decree of the Ministry of Health No. 743 of 14 September 1994, as amended and supplemented; i.e. they treat motor and sensory disorders of the eye and carry out instrumental-ophthalmological semeiology techniques following doctors’ prescriptions.

Skills list:

Recording of clinical data

Anamnesis collection

Patient assessment

Strabismus detection test

Strabismus assessment strategies

Drawing up a prevention, management and treatment plan for each pathology

Orthoptic rehabilitation

Visual acuity and refraction examination

Semeiotics applied to glaucomatous pathology

Retinal semeiotics

Corneal semeiotics

Other ophthalmic semeiotics

Operating room assistance

Imaging diagnosis