First and foremost, we are doing our utmost to do our best in difficult conditions. We stopped seeing patients on March 13 because of uncertainty over the behaviour of the coronavirus, the risk of cross-infection in our surgeries, and to allow time for a working public health policy to be put in place. Consequently, there is a large backlog of patients to be seen and they will be attended to in strict order.

We have now put a process in place to deal with your treatment in a safe and efficient manner. This includes the use of high level personal protective equipment (PPE). This takes us more time per visit in order to clean the surgery and chair.

Reducing social contact

We must reduce footfall at the practice. Only the patient should attend for each appointment. We are asking that parents not enter the practice, if at all possible. If they feel they must attend, they should wear their own facemask (we cannot supply facemasks). No siblings may attend under any circumstances. If we need to discuss an aspect of treatment progress or poor oral hygiene, we will call you.

Your appointment

In order to reduce time spent in the practice, we will supply each patient with their next appointment as closely matching the appointment they have just completed, in terms of time of day and day of the week. Initially, we will have to increase the interval between your appointments in order to be able to see everyone. That means that instead of the normal six to eight-week cycle, we will operate an eight to ten-week cycle, until we see how we are managing.

Punctuality

We ask you to attend for your appointment on time, not two to three minutes late. If you are early and the waiting room chair is occupied, you must wait outside the practice until the next patient leaves.

Payment

Claudia will try to give you an idea of what money is due and the patient can bring the means of payment to Claudia when they attend for their appointment. Please try to bring your account up to date. However, to reflect the fact that two months have been lost, we will not be rolling over the accounts for the time being, i.e., those seen in May will be expected to get their account to the end of March up to date and so on.

Please note: both the toilet and the water dispenser will not be in use.

Heed Government guidelines

Please practise social distancing. This means not going for walks with your friends! And not going to the shop every time you leave the house. Reduce your social contacts to only those that are necessary.