We want you to know we are still here for you.
It’s 9:40 am and I am in the practice on my own – I’m doing my best to try to stay in contact with our lovely team, but it’s a tricky task trying to juggle it all. Day in day out, I’m doing my best to complete the fundamental tasks: cleaning and decontamination, postage, accounts, stock, compliance and all the little bits inbetween. Did I mention the cleaning? So much cleaning!
I’m about to have telephone consultation with a patient who has so many general medical challenges that she really doesn’t want to come anywhere near someone like me – she doesn’t know this yet but she really doesn’t! It looks like from here on we are going to do our very very best to not see you in person – we will be there when you need us, but to protect us all, we want to check-in by telephone first before seeing you face-to-face.
In many ways, for our tiny practice, this change will bite incredibly hard. For more than a decade we have had, “has a genuine interest in people”, as the first line in every staff recruitment advert we’ve placed. I’m hopeful we can continue to make this connection via the various technological means we are becoming familiar with.
In any case, with regard to this delightful patient, I spoke to them yesterday evening, am reviewing their records in all their complexity and I think I will be able to put their mind at rest a little. Given their history of brutal and sudden vision loss up to now, I hope this will have real value. And I’m here to do the same for any of our patients – please do call me if you have any concerns.
I hope everyone is staying safe and well,
Andrew.