We hope you, your families and all in your practices are well.

As we head towards some slight loosening of the lockdown rules (picnics! garden centres!), we are beginning to make plans for resuming our clinics in this new environment, as we hope you are too. Things will be rather different: social distancing means separate or spread-out waiting areas, and no accompanying relatives; investment in and use of diagnostic equipment that minimises risk and can be thoroughly disinfected, or with disposable parts; seamless patient flow to ensure they spend as little time as possible in the building; follow up admin taking place by phone or email. It will be less personal and distanced, but very safe – certainly more so than many supermarkets, for example. But we’ll look ahead to a time when the waiting rooms are buzzing and our regular patients are greeted by the team like the old friends they are….

Anyway, please find below the link to the latest in the series of Mark’s slides to give you something to mull over. This one looks at retinal disease, and the importance of understanding a patient’s history to help you make sense of the clinical signs:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8jq3e88d7y4umxd/macular%20tips_2020%20.pdf?dl=0

(Note: Some browsers seem to only show the first slide. If so, try another browser or download the pdf file using the arrow button next to the ‘Sign in’ button at the top.)

We are open, as always by phone and email. We are planning to start running our small, socially distanced clinics at the end of May and into June. Mark has been going into the clinic mainly to carry out AMD injections, which generally can’t be postponed (for those of you who know him primarily for glaucoma, he is also Medical Retina trained, and does a lot of this with his uveitis clinics at Moorfields). We hope that you are also in a position to plan a return to work – please let us know if there’s anything we can do.

Meanwhile, enjoy the picnics and gardening this weekend!