Open next week! 🤞🏼

Jul 26, 2020
3 min read

Last week I enjoyed my first visit to the pub since February with a few friends. You may have noticed I took a week off from writing my blog too – purely co-incidental 😏

I was actually quite impressed with our local pub to be honest. They’d removed more than half of their tables, had a 1 way system to and from the toilet, hand sanitiser stations, screens and signage were up and you had to order and pay for drinks on an app which were then delivered to the table. I felt quite comfortable and of-course it was great to have the first real pint in 5 months (I’m obviously not counting all those fake ones I’ve had in the house during lockdown.)

We moved on to a restaurant for dinner but it was a bit of a different story there. The staff had visors on, some of them wore gloves, although it was honestly packed more than I’ve ever seen it. Each table had a small plastic screen at one end but it seemed to me that they were trying to appear to make the effort rather than actually being sensible about it. We still stayed for dinner although I was a bit disappointed. Dinner was really nice to be fair but I wouldn’t feel comfortable going back there unless the seating arrangements were altered, which is a shame for the restaurant in the long term if a lot of other people feel the same way.

I really appreciate when I go to a shop and everyone has a face covering on, hand sanitiser is in place and people are respecting the social distance when queuing or passing each other. It’s sensible and necessary if we’re going to get business going again safely and prevent another peak/lockdown.

Our own business is now ready to open next week (pending a pass on our inspection on Wednesday) and we’ve taken a host of precautions to keep our patients and staff safe:

Everyone will have a Covid screening prior to entering.
Our door will be locked as we will be limited to appointment only at the moment, sorry that means no ‘walk in’s’ for now.
Some patients may be asked to wait in cars until your appointment time.
We have extra hand sanitising stations on entry and exit.
Our medical history and consent forms will now be completed by text message prior to your appointment so no more signing forms or signature pads on entry.
Patient and staff numbers will be limited so we don’t have too many people in the building at once.
We’ll be limiting the treatments we provide initially.
Our staff PPE might be a little different from what you remember:

Raashi absolutely loving her fit test – thankfully the yellow bit isn’t part of the PPE 😆

☝🏼The ‘fit-testing’ is about finding out which type of masks fits best for each of our staff. The test itself is not fun at all though. A truly awful scent is puffed into the yellow hood for 7 minutes and pass or fail the test you experience the taste. Bogging, humming, barking, rank, reeking, rotten. Take your pick. It’s all of the above and I can still taste it 2 days later.

Last few days to finish up the DIY (I’m just making tea for the plasterer) at home then it’s BACK TO WORK!! Buzzing. 🐝 😁

(p.s. unfortunately we can’t make any appointments until we pass our inspection – we’ll update on Wednesday how it goes 🤞🏼)

Have a good week everyone,

Joe

Joseph Watson BDS MFDS RCPS MSc (Implantology)