As we head into the Easter weekend it seemed like a good time to look back at the last 12 months. This time last we were one week into the first national lockdown and all the dealing with uncertainty that came with it. During that time we were able to move to a new patient record system, which allows us to much more than we could with old one. Mind you transferring about 3000 patients records was not fun. As well as catch up with some other boring paper work.
We returned to work in middle of May having implemented a number of changes to way we work/run the practice in order to keep everyone safe. I think we can all agree that the wearing of masks took a while to get used too (and they will probably be part of daily life for a good while yet).
The month of October saw the next big changes as we introduced a number of new services to the practice. Two for fungal nail and one for verrucae’s.
Firstly we brought in a testing kit for fungal infections, which allows us quickly and accurately diagnose fungal nail infections, this in turn means we are able to tailor our advise when dealing with nail related problems. We also started offering The Lacuna Method® as means of treating positive fungal nail infections. This is a treatment that we had been looking at for a few years but unfortunately had never been able attended a training day. One the advantages of the pandemic is that although we have been unable to attended courses and conferences in person. Many have been adapted to enable them to be delivered online thus we were able upskill from the comfort of living, to be able to over this new treatment. Hopefully this is something that will continue in the future as many training days/conferences require a fair amount of travel from sunny Dorset.
The final treatment we brought into the practice was Verrutop, a new treatment for verrucae, more information can be found here. So far this treatment has been working well but we haven’t seen many verrucae’s recently so have not used it as much as we would like.
As we previously mentioned our new patient record system allows us to so much more, one of the main advantages it has over the old system is an integrated online booking system. Again this went live in October and has been a very popular and welcome addition with both old and new patients. As well as the online booking system we also now have part receptionist who works Monday and Thursday morning (she started in January) all be it from home for the time being. Hopefully when she is able to come back into the practice this will make making an appointment even easier.
As they always say keep the best to till last. The biggest change for us in the last 12month was of course the birth of our daughter Seren, who is now nearly 5 months old, where has the time gone. Hopefully one day you will all get to meet her as I’m sure she will spend many an hour in and around the practice. Who knows she may even decide she wants to follow in her parents foot steps.
We would like to take this opportunity to thank you all your ongoing support and lets look forward to a successful next 12 months.