Festive Opening Times
COVID update
As we embark on a second national lockdown we thought it was a good time to update you on how we are getting on at Hollybank. For some months now we have been adapting to our new way of working and have been providing our full service, albeit with some logistical changes. Over the next four weeks we are not booking any new routine vaccinations or surgeries (those already booked will not be cancelled) but otherwise we remain open as normal with our 24 hour emergency care unchanged. We do request all clients attending an appointment wear a face covering.
Our clinical team continue to provide consultations outside rather than in the practice. We appreciate this is not always convenient and there are a number of challenges (particularly with regards to communication) when consulting takes place in this manner, but it is designed to keep everyone safe. We are working on whether we can start to move some appointments inside but this is not straight forward. Hollybank is a lovely old building but it does not lend itself well to one-way systems and social distancing! As we enter the winter months we have added an outside light for the carpark as well as some gilets to help keep our clinical team toasty! We hope the addition of a new intercom on the front door is allowing better communication for you with our reception team.
Another notable addition is that our clinical staff will now all be wearing full PPE (Personal Protective Equipment) both outside when consulting and inside when looking after your pets and interacting with each other. The advice from the RCVS (Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons) on the use of PPE has changed recently and they are now recommending that we wear it. Most importantly this will help protect everyone from becoming unwell. In addition we should be able to keep our full team working as much as possible as it eliminates the ‘in-contact’ isolation risk.
Finally we want to thank you, our clients, for your support and understanding throughout this year. We know that things have not always gone as smoothly as we would have liked but we are committed to maintaining our high standard of customer care, despite the restricted world we find ourselves in. We are so grateful for your patience whilst we fine tune the ‘new normal’ for Hollybank.
COVID-19 – update
2020 will certainly not be a year any of us forget in a hurry. In March, the way we live and work changed, perhaps forever. Some businesses had to close their doors and are yet to re-open. Others continued, providing food or essential services. Here at Hollybank Veterinary Centre, we perhaps fell somewhere between the two and that has given us a lot of challenges over the last three months.
Hollybank opened in March 2009, just as we entered a recession, so we are no stranger to economic uncertainty. Thankfully, eleven years on, we are hopefully more resilient, but nothing could have prepared us for a pandemic.
When the Prime Minister announced the lockdown we had some quick decisions to make. We knew we wanted to stay open and provide the service our clients and patients rely on, but at the same time we needed to keep our staff and clients safe and we needed to weather the storm financially. We took guidance from our governing and advice bodies – the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons (RCVS), the British Veterinary Association (BVA) and the British Small Animal Veterinary Association (BSAVA) and set about making a plan. This plan was to change many times (just in the first 24 hours alone!) because no-one knew exactly what they were dealing with.
For the first part of lockdown the advice was clear – emergencies only. No clients were allowed in the practice which meant our whole way of working had to alter. Instead of our normal face to face consults we would use telephone consultation to triage cases and decide who needed to be seen and who we could treat remotely. Normally our guidelines state we must examine all patients in order to provide prescription medication but the RCVS granted temporary measures to allow us to prescribe remotely, reducing the number of people who would need to come to the hospital. For those that did need to come we had to take pets from their owner into the practice as safely as we could. Cats in baskets were quite straight forward but dogs on leads proved a little trickier!
Social distancing within the practice was another challenge. Whilst it was possible to keep clinical (vets and nurses) and non-clinical (receptionists) staff two metres apart, vets and nurses examining and treating the same patient could not socially distance. Two teams were formed, each made up of two vets and two nurses that would work 4 days on, 4 days off each, thus minimising interactions as much as possible and allowing one team to remain operational should any member of the other team become unwell. Of course regular handwashing is second nature in our job anyway!
Although we would have liked to keep all our staff working, that was just not an option. We had a markedly reduced workload as all routine and preventative healthcare appointments and procedures had to be cancelled. We furloughed several staff. They would remain in reserve if any of the working members of staff became unwell.
We provided a daily delivery service for medications and food orders. We hoped this would be helpful to our clients, some of whom had to self-isolate or shield, as well as reducing the number of people needing to come into contact with our staff. Using the ambulance we provided daily deliveries every week day right up until the end of May.
Once it became clear that we were going to have to get used to a new ‘normal’, the advice on what we could do gradually altered. Some vaccinations were allowed – whilst we did not want to compromise public health, nor did we want an outbreak of disease in our cat and dog populations. Over time, the advice from RCVS, BVA and BSAVA has evolved to the point that we are now allowed to do the vast majority of our normal workload. Strict social distancing measures of course have to be maintained and that has provided new challenges. Our reception remains closed and we now have an intercom system in order to conduct consultations at a distance. We have also erected a gazebo to provide outside cover (we cannot rely on the lovely weather continuing!).
We have now made the decision to start bringing back our furloughed staff. Our consultations take longer than they would normally and we are getting busy enough to be able to return to our full staff capacity. However, we continue to work in teams to ensure that should anyone become unwell, we can both protect other people and continue to staff the hospital appropriately to provide ongoing 24 hour care.
The changes we have had to undertake during the last three months have been challenging and of course there will likely be many more before things start to look more like life used to. However, there have been some wonderful moments. Being able to lend some of our monitoring equipment to the NHS helped us feel we were playing our part too. We are so proud of how the team have responded to the difficult times – those that have worked long hours and unusual shifts without complaint and those that have not been able to work and have supported their colleagues from home.
