Hi everyone. Thank you for clicking on this update. I hope you are keeping well.
I have some good news to share with you! We are now in a position to increase our provision to you, our trusty patients. As of next week, we will be increasing our opening hours and providing essential services. Regrettably, for the moment, we don’t have the “all clear” to carry out routine eye examinations.
So let me clarify for you, where we’re at and what we can do for you:
Expanded definition of essential and Emergency Services
Whilst we have been open for emergency services throughout the lockdown, I have kept a fairly tight definition of what might constitute an emergency. Whilst optometry practises are not scheduled to reopen for routine procedures, recent events and advice allow for a wider range of circumstances that might be considered an essential eye care need. This will still be judged on an individual basis but there is no need to struggle on if you feel that your vision has deteriorated or that you've broken your spectacles and are making do with an old pair. As people are going back to work, more people are going to be driving so it is essential that if you're concerned about your vision you have an examination rather than going for a drive to see if you feel safe to do so.
As far as routine examinations go, it’s difficult to say exactly when they will be available but hopefully sometime soon. Advice is changing on an almost daily basis so if you have any questions or concerns, the best thing to do is to give us a call and we can talk it through.
What can you expect when you next visit?
As valued patients I wanted to let you know about some of the changes we have implemented for when you next book and attend your appointment. The changes are being made as a result of the government's guidance on coronavirus and are designed with yours and our safety in mind.
We will only be seeing patients who have booked appointments in advance. This applies to eye examinations and collection of contact lenses and spectacles. When you attend for an examination, we will be allocating you an hour so that we have to time to clean everything prior to our next appointment.
The day before you attend for an appointment, we will give you a quick call and ask you a series of straightforward questions. It’s nothing too onerous I can assure you!
For the foreseeable future will be operating on a closed door policy. This is so that we can control the number of people in the practice at any given time. When you arrive, you may be asked to wait outside briefly whist we ensure that we are ready for you. One of the team will then greet you and explain our protocols and arrangements. Hand sanitizer will be available, and we would request that you use it on arrival. We would be grateful if you could attend wearing a facemask. If you do forget we will have some that we will be able to issue you. 2m social distancing measures will be in place so some of your appointment will be carried out in the waiting area to limit the time we are in the consulting room. As you will know I have a lot of digital equipment in my consulting room and that will help us complete a thorough examination, with the minimum of fuss. If I need to review pictures, I will do that after you have left the room to help minimise the time we are in a confined space together.
James and Sarah will help you select frames. Independent browsing however will not be an option in the short term I'm afraid. Restricting this will enable us to clean and sterilize all frames that have been handled in between patients. Cross infection remains a priority and we have adopted extra cleaning procedures to facilitate this. Rest assured we are doing everything we can to keep you safe.
I suspect that situation is liable to change and we will have to adapt our procedures to fit in with them and I'll keep you updated with those as and when they happen. If you have any queries, please call us on 0117 9730335 or drop us an email to amar@seeamar.co.uk.
Thanks
As I said the last 11 weeks have been very difficult for everybody, I'd like to publicly thank James and Sarah for their help over that period of time and prior to that.
I'd also like to thank you our lovely patients for your continued support and understanding and we look forward to welcoming you back in the near future.
Best wishes
Amar Shah