New Ways of Working - NA
Jan 31, 11:28 AM
And I remember then, suddenly starting getting memos from management… saying there’s a virus in China, so if you someone from certain parts of China you must immediately sort of run out of the room, close the door behind you, whilst actually just mouthing to the patient ‘I will ring you’ and kind of gesturing to the telephone, and then ring them, get a proper history, and then start the process of basically, um, you know, quarantining this patient, and transferring to a&e… Fast forward a little bit, and being told ‘If you see someone from China with cough symptoms, or symptoms of an upper respiratory tract infection, then do wear a mask and an apron, but otherwise there’s no need.’… Fast forward a little bit more, and it extended I think to the north of Italy, and I remember then getting into discussions about how to ration our aprons and masks. In out of hours it was fine but believe me in my actual GP surgery, where I did my day job, we were suddenly having to come up with masks and aprons where we never really had. I remember just sort of pushing my chair back a little when seeing patients and feeling so rude… Then the policy changed and the policy now was you should wear a mask and an apron for everyone that you see, so started doing that, and then I think come March [2020] I remember my practice manager coming in,.. ‘Right we’re converting all your appointments to telephone calls’ and I thought that is insane. It was absolutely just surreal, and I remember speaking to patients and needing to see them, and just kind of feeling helpless and quite silly actually… And then we figured out how to do remote consultations and we started getting savvy… Still doing home visits where necessary, just, you know, wearing my mask and apron and requesting if possible to have windows open or see the patients in their conservatories or things like that.