One of the challenges during this pandemic is having qualified professionals available in order to provide emergency care for our frontline NHS staff and the general public.

 

If a practice has an optometrist or DO  who ends up in self-isolation or cannot work because of being in the risk category then we are trying to pull together a central place where practices can quickly find an Optom or a DO who can come and support the practice in delivering services that will be essential to help the NHS. 

 

This will ensure that optical practices can play their part to avoid overwhelming hospitals during this expected escalation of the impact of the virus.

 

To that end, any of you Optom’s or DO who are out there and have been impacted, there’s a link here which you can click on and what we’re going to try and do is pull together a database where all of you live, we’re going to make it searchable so that practices can quickly search and find Optom’s and DO’s who can who can come and service practices in a particular area with a certain skill set.  

 

You’ll need to click on the link, the link will then ask you for some details, if you fill in those details, we are going to then over the next few days, turn that into a searchable database.  This will mean practices that are looking for somebody with those specific skills can quickly find those individuals and contact them, that should provide some level of work during this disruptive period for those of our colleagues who are self-employed or locums.

 

I’d like to thank you all for your messages and support for the challenges of last week and I look forward to being #STRONGERTOGETHER as next week’s challenges unfold.

 

Stay Safe

 

Aadil Ahnmad