Click here for the Returning to Work in a Hybrid World blog post.
Ali 0:00
We’re gonna be talking about what it might look like to reopen practices, what it might look like to return to practice now that we’re moving into some loosening in some places of the social distancing rules. And I want to introduce Stephani, and how I ran across Stephani is actually I was on LinkedIn and Scott, who spoke yesterday had liked a post that you wrote, and it was called, I’m gonna have to wait for everyone to stop typing in the chat so it doesn’t get lost. I’m going to post it in here anyway.
So I ran across this blog that you wrote, which was called The Future of Physical Therapy, and you were talking about sort of the return to work, and where physiotherapy came from. So you’re a physiotherapist in Toronto, and you wrote this blog, which I clicked on and read and I thought, Oh, I’m having a conversation about this and I was like, who is this person that decided to spend their time while social distancing and not working, writing an entire blog about the history of physical therapy and what it might look like to return to physiotherapy after this. I reached out to you three days ago? That’s like, Hey, you sound like you’re very interesting. I’d love to talk.
So here we are. This is very cool. This is the kind of thing that people are capable of. And it’s amazing.
Today I want to talk about what returned to work might look like. I want to talk about the tools in Jane that could help you return to work. And then I just also wanted to hear about, you know your story.
Why did you decide to write this blog post at this time?
Stephani 1:41
I guess, like I was kind of mentioning to you before, I really like the educational part of being a physiotherapist and being able to just one, continue to learn and I think that’s one of the opportunities I’ve taken with kind of being out of work is like, I get to learn whatever I want. I took a random online accounting course, which I regret, but just like the opportunity to learn things, and that’s part of our profession in any sort of healthcare profession is you’re always gonna learn, but then also being able to share that knowledge or what you do learn with people.
And I think one of the biggest things that we’re learning right now is that the world is changing, and it’s not going to go back to the way things were for a long time, for a while at least, exactly how it used to be. And I kind of thought, How can I express what I’m thinking and what can I do to kind of share some thoughts and see what other people think about it while I’m here in isolation, and so I started writing a blog. I’ve gotten a couple of posts on low back pain, that sort of thing.
But what I’ve been top of my mind with like, even friends and other colleagues was, what is gonna happen to this profession? Are we going to be able to go back to work? How’s it going to look? And what does that mean for our careers?
So I just started looking into the history of physio and seeing how it had developed and kind of wanted to write about it.
Ali 3:00
Yeah, I posted the link in the chat. It’s on medium, which is a blog platform. I’ll post it again at the end in case it gets lost in there, but it’s really an interesting read. It’s definitely interesting.
And I didn’t mention that when I looked you up. I checked your websites to be like, what does she use for booking? And I was like, Oh, she’s a Jane customer. Even if you weren’t, I still would have reached out. But I was just like, I was excited to see this.
Stephani 3:27
I think I’ve used Jane at every clinic. I’ve worked at three clinics now and every clinic has always been Jane. Even before I knew you.
Ali 3:34
Sometimes when I walk by clinics, I’m looking them up like, what are you using?
I like one of the things that Starbucks sent around recently a letter to all of their franchises, or however they work, whatever their business model is, and they said something about, we’re in a period right now, because they’re reopening as well.
I just find it interesting the way leaders are talking about reopening things right now what it looks like in our communities, and they said that, that we’re in a position right now where we’re monitoring and adapting. And I just felt like there was so much like, flexibility in that and what it might look like.
And I appreciated that you weren’t thinking of just like, we turned off our practices, we all hibernated. It’s the great pause. People are saying, we’re all distancing. And the turning on of that is not going to look like a light switch turning back on.
And so I think this is where you were kind of doing some mental gymnastics like you were doing some imagining, and our imagination is a phenomenal tool. It’s how we plan for the future. And so what did that look like to you? Like, what sort of things were you considering? As you think about what the world looks like right now what a return to practice could look like.
Stephani 4:42
I mean, from a physical being in clinic point of view, I think a lot of it’s going to be a little bit slower to begin with and I think that’s from a safety point of view warranted, and from a security of like how patients feel warranted. So we were talking about whether that means buffer times between patients and even extra sanitation.
We don’t know what government regulations are going to look like. Whether that means we need gloves, masks, who’s going to be allowed in the clinic? How many people at a time. All those physical specifics I don’t know about, but what I do know is that, I’m sure like many people in the healthcare world, we’ve been learning how to use virtual care a lot over the last month or two and I don’t think that that’s going to be the end of it here. It’s shown again how the profession can grow and I think it’s just a new opportunity that we can use.
I think nowadays more than ever, people are looking for things that are quick and easy. That’s kind of our society and it’s not always the right fix, but if you can get the same quality, professional advice and care that you can in a clinic at home, depending on the stage of your rehab or your treatment or your recovery or what you require out of it, It is an option that’s still that’s still going to be available.
I don’t think that it’s just going to go from everyone’s providing virtual to only everyone providing that in-clinic care again. I think that there can be a bit of both for the same patient. You might be in person one day and then have two weeks of online check-ins, that are more acceptable and don’t require you going into a clinic.
Ali 6:13
Yeah. I fully agree with you. I think some people when they think, oh they’re just waiting to get back to normal, but I just don’t know that normal will be the same as before this.
So it’s important, I think, to have those sort of just take a pause, take a moment. In his Allied session, Scott talked about journaling, actually, and he talked about sitting back and really taking time to actually think things through.
I wrote a letter to the manager of one of my practices considering reopening next month, and as I started to write out all the things that we should be doing right now, I realized there’s so many things that we could be doing right now to prepare for next month.
So I was like we need to be sourcing PBE. All of our patients going to have to be in masks. All of our practitioners are going to have to be in masks, so we can start sourcing that. We’re going to have to be doing extra sanitization, so we can start getting extra spray bottles and filling them up. We can do all of that. Now, what are the things we can do today to prep for next month?
You also have to book clients in two weeks before you actually see them at all, and then the idea of we’re going to do telehealth screening. So we’re going to have to do telehealth screening calls. We have to set that up in Jane, our screening visits like there’s so many things that we can do while we’re waiting.
So are there things you’re doing right now to prep for your return in person?
Stephani 7:32
Yeah, a lot of what we’ve been doing has just been out of care for our patients and just seeing how they’re doing but it’s staying in contact with our patients. One of my clinics, we work with younger athletes, and we’re offering hockey teams kind of rehab classes over zoom and that sort of thing.
So we’re trying to just stay in contact with our patients, and then just looking at how it’s going to work. How many people are going to be in the clinic at a time and just kind of everyone’s schedules a bit all over the place right now, but talking about schedule changes, and that sort of thing might have to be a reality.
It’s really just brainstorming like that. And then from a patient point of view, it’s just trying to stay in contact with them, so that they realize that we’re still here, we still care about them just because the government said we’ve had to close doesn’t mean that we wanted to stop treating them and taking care of them and care about their well being.
I think that that’s another point is because communication lines, I’m not sure about everyone else, but can get blurry with email and that sort of stuff. You have to be cautious about what personal information you’re willing to give out, and I like the platform and being able to use Jane I can chart on them and then we’ve used interactions with Physitrack where patients can report on whether they’ve been doing their exercises or not, without having that personal contact.
Ali 8:49
I wanted to share my screen and just talk about a few of the places in Jane that you can already start working on it, in preparation for reopening your practice.
I also wanted to talk about I’ve seen the reopen plan from Oregon, from Saskatchewan just launched a very clear five-stage reopen plan. BC is just talking about it now too. I know every state has it and every province has its own rules, but in every case that I’ve seen so far, Allied healthcare has been part of the first or second stage of reopening. Typically, it’s been physio and chiro initially, moving into acupuncture and massage.
I did want to say to our B.C. massage therapists that you were included with acupuncturists in this most recent press release and not with nail salons and hairstylists. When it was initially announced there was a lot of conflict around the way massage therapists are being categorized, they were being categorized as a medical facility in the most recent announcements. So I think there’s definitely some movement right now in the whole North American community for sure about reopening and a lot of talk about that sometime in May.
So now is the time to start getting ready for that, not in May. You’re going to be scrambling. If you’re like, Well wait, I can start seeing people. We should be prepping for that now. Not in May, when you actually want to open your doors, and you suddenly realize, oh, shoot, I need to do all of this admin work, I need to get all of these supplies, I need to plan how I’m going to do this.
So I’ll share my screen. So if I don’t plan appropriately, I just told you like if I’m sharing my screen, sometimes I don’t hide my bookmark bar and I have weird things pinned up there and I’m actually displaying people. I just wanted to show a couple of places in Jane that might be helpful when you’re considering returning to your practice.
One is like we said, there will be a time here where you need to add buffers in between your patients. So the idea is that you’ll need more time to sanitize between treatments than you might have otherwise needed before. So instead of having to change every single one of your treatment links, here, I’m in my staff profile.
So actually, I’ll just go back. So every staff member has a profile here and Jane. We’re on Jo-Ellen’s, and if we edit her profile, and go into the settings tab here, I went very fast, sorry, settings right here there is an area called post-treatment time. And it’s set by default that it will just use whatever the scheduled duration is, but you can add a break, a buffer. So if I added a 30 minute, I don’t know how long, we probably need 15 minutes. If I added a buffer between every treatment, all that’s going to do is make every single one of your treatments 15 minutes longer than it normally is. So you can just do that and then once you open up booking again, you don’t have to change anything else about your treatments. You’ll automatically have more time between each patient.
So you can set that to whatever you want, depending on your practice and your treatment style, and then you’ll have that time to disinfectant, change your PPEE, do laundry, change your pillowcases, whatever it is you’re going to need to do more often, more frequently, or that you’re going to have to add in that you didn’t do previously. So that was one place I wanted to show you.
I also wanted to talk about contactless payments. This was surprising to me. When B.C. started talking about the reopening of medical clinics and facilities, one of the first things they mentioned was payments, which I thought was so interesting. Contactless payments. I guess, they’ve really decided that touching all those pin pads and touching money is a way that the virus can spread easily and you’ve seen that, like lots of places aren’t taking cash right now. And they’ve upped the amount that you can pay for by tap, so that this can accommodate more contactless payment. So I will say if you are part of our payment session yesterday or the day before, we went through a lot of this and you can find the recording.
Ali 13:11
If you go to the Allied webpage here, you can actually watch all the recorded sessions before this one. You can just connect right to them.
And so Kevin did one on Jane Payments very early on, so you can find it and watch it. He explains how that all works if you have Jane payments enabled, but you can even do something like start storing credit cards on file before they come in, if that’s something that your patients would be open to, with the explanation that it just allows you to then charge them without them providing any sort of physical card when they arrive. Or you can after the fact send them a pay balance email, which is to the same effect so you just don’t have that card in advance.
So depending on your client base, and how comfortable you are on actually following up on admin things. Once you are on the patient’s profile, if they have an outstanding balance after the treatment, under the billing tab, you can send them a pay balance email, and that will just request that they pay online. So a couple of options for contactless payments. It didn’t even occur to me that that would be something that you would want to maybe think about in advance and change the setup of your payments.
I’m just opening the chat here.
Paul said he’s super busy right now preparing and creating protocols in anticipation of your May 19 return. Paul, what are you doing?
Stephani 14:38
Share these protocols.
Ali 14:42
I also want to share the CDC handbook that is really helpful.
In the chat, Heather’s offering payment plans since some may be affected by job loss. Interesting.
You know what, there’s a packages feature that we’re going to announce today at 4:30pm. So everyone should tune into the wrap up at 4:30pm. You’re going to see a demo of all of the new features that are coming.
PPE ordering I think is one of the most important things to do right now, obviously, there’s going to be some shortages.
Ali 15:18
So if you’re treating, think about the PPE in advance, it’s definitely a big challenge.
One of my team members is having chiro today, and the chiro asked her to go and get a mask before she came in. So he’s screening, you don’t have any symptoms. So obviously, that’s part of the screening. You don’t have any symptoms, no fever. He asked her to bring her own N95 mask, like a specific mask, and I guess that’s because these clinics haven’t yet adapted, like being able to prep.
So where can you get gowns?. Yeah, we’re starting by asking all of our current or existing providers, what they have available, and then after that, we’ll go out and start a wider circle. Have you started stocking up on PPE for your practice?
Stephani 16:17
Not so much gowns. We had some disposable pillowcase covering and that sort of stuff and then just stocking more Lysol wipes and hand sanitizer and things like that and gloves. I’ve even just purchased some gloves that I have in my house and I’m like I can bring them into the clinic if we need, you know what I mean but we haven’t thought as far as gowns yet to be honest.
Ali 16:39
Steve said they’re working on patient treatment timing.
Yeah timing I wanted to mention as well. There’s a lot of talk about, you should not be having people obviously waiting in your waiting room. So communication with your clients about how they should be coming only right on time.
And if they’re early waiting in their cars, not coming into the clinic until it’s time for their treatment and then of course, in between, what are we disinfecting? Like door handles, every surface. I mentioned to my team that we’re going to expect more laundry, sanitize all door handles, all payments, all surfaces, like so much has to be done between every treatment.
Stephani 17:13
And I don’t know about you guys, but we have gym equipment in both my clinics and so it’s just how much you’re going to be using of that, and are you wiping that down between everyone? We have a couple of classes that run in like those won’t be running initially because that’s sharing of equipment.
Ali 17:26
So then only one-on-one.
So I think the other thing I heard mentioned from I think it was the CDC, I’m going to pull it up. The CDC has a hygiene pocket handbook. It was pretty good actually, even talking about cleaning like ultrasonic modalities. You’re going to obviously have the cleaning of all those between patients. And these things, of course, that are good practice no matter what but, we’re not as diligent as we should be.
One of the points that came up. I don’t remember where I read it, but it was so fascinating and it talked about the importance of documentation in a health crisis like this, because you have to have people book under the right names, of course, you have to have all their contact information, you have to make sure you’re charting exactly what you did. And all of these things, because you have to imagine that there is no break and that someone in your clinic that came to see you was affected, and then they have to do contact tracing. So the importance of documentation, well all of these things are always important, but it’s also 100 times more important.
Stephani 18:33
It’s even documenting that you use an alcohol swab to clean their skin first, which you normally might not document. It’s just specific what you did as a cleaning measure and what you’ve done and what they consented to.
Ali 18:47
So that’s actually a good point. You could if you want to do some things in Jane’s templates, you could add extra consents or extra details in your chart template to show: disinfected the room between treatments. You could have a whole template that says exactly what you did to disinfect your space in between treatments. Just things that will be helpful.
They said we’re expecting to reopen, but everybody should also be prepared to pull back again. So it’s kind of a combo of doing both.
People are asking, does anyone know a supplier with Lysol wipes in stock? If so, send the name company or link.
Stephani 19:26
If nobody can find them, let me know.
Ali 19:29
We’re all looking.
Noel they’re providing masks for patients as they come in, checking temperature, no contact, removing anything a patient could touch. That’s a good point.
Some people are far less concerned about this than others. I’m shocked by the behaviour of some people. So you have to I guess, prepare for those types of patients coming in.
Stephani 19:54
And it’s even just having chairs in your waiting room and that sort of stuff. Not providing opportunities for people to almost get comfortable, which sounds horrible to say, but you want to just be as cautious as you can.
Ali 20:05
That’s a good point, removing just everything that’s not necessary, then you don’t have to clean it.
Unknown Speaker 20:09
Yeah, that’s helpful.
Ali 20:12
Theresa is saying you can text people to come in when you’re ready to have them come in. Interesting idea.
It’s definitely safer to provide masks. Yes. It’s just I think some people are just trying to manage right now.
Where you can get gowns is a popular question here.
And virtual session consent, COVID screening, and consent to treat. Yeah, these are all so helpful.
I feel like there was another comment here that I wanted to share because I’m loving the conversation that’s coming from people in the chat here about what they’re already doing or what they’re planning on doing.
Some of you are already treating, I know Noel’s been treating acute and emergency care.
Stephani 20:53
I was gonna say it depends on the type of clinic you’re in right or where you’re working.
Ali 20:58
So Amy’s got people already calling, so they’re calling and then you call them back when it’s time to come in if you’re not ready yet. That’s a good idea.
So a lot of this can be added as information to their post-treatment email. In Jane, there’s a lot of places you can customize to help with this communication. In your settings tab at the top here, there’s a language area and a lot of things can be edited from here.
In many places. I’d encourage everyone to go into that area if you have account owner access. If you don’t see that area, it’s just that you don’t have that access. So you can let your account or your clinic owner know but you can add that notice on your online booking page.
So you can have a message that pops up even before anyone comes to book and make it really noticeable, so you can include all information about what you’re doing there to keep people safe in your practice. And then after you send emails after people book an appointment, they get a thanks for booking notification.
Stephani 22:16
Are you trying to get a screenshare?
Ali 22:19
Okay, so if you’re on the Settings tab at the top here, there’s the languages area on the left and from here, there are many, many places in Jane that you can customize Jane to be exactly right for your practice.
And one of the things is the banner on the online booking page which looks like this. And you can put information right at the top so before anyone books an appointment, they’re going to read that and get some extra information.
And then the other place that is helpful is in your treatments. Every practitioner has their own treatment list, and when you edit a treatment, there’s an area called post-treatment information.
Booking information here, after booking. Anything that you put into this little area here will go out on the thanks for booking email, and so you can include information about what they need to do to prepare as well.
Stephani 23:45
Oh, that’s great.
Ali 23:49
Steve says the banners have been helpful.
The text in the appointment reminders has been great too. That’s right. You can change your text reminders. That’s really handy.
Do you do that?
Stephani 23:56
Yeah, we found that really helpful also to, even like for the virtual points. Just for some like reminders and that sort of thing for people.
Ali 24:08
I’m just seeing if there are any other thoughts in the chat here.
You’re also thinking a lot of people are doing screening calls in advance to make sure that the person’s an appropriate person to be treated.
And then the other thing I was thinking people could do right now is staff training. So most of the admin staff are not aware or not like trained in the protocols that will be necessary upon reopening. So documenting that creating.
What have you guys been working on for that?
Stephani 24:46
I mean, towards the end of before we got shut down and closed, we even had checklists that we’re going through and that was based off of guidelines from the government and what they recommended and required what you must be cleaning, what you must be doing, and we even sent letters out to our patients at that time, before we knew how aggressive this was going to ge, this is what we’re doing. This is what they’ve recommended and this has all been what will be done and times that those would get checked off and how often that would be done. I mean, outside of things that need to be done regularly, like door handles after every person now but even just surfaces that maybe you’re not wiping down every time.
It’s just a checklist that we have in my clinic now, which the admin staff actually has been really good at. Especially in one clinic where we do have regular admin staff. The other one is a bit of self-run with therapists.
Ali 25:32
So prepping with all that documentation can be done now, while you’re still not practicing. There’s so many things that people can do now and I think everyone’s a little bit desperate for something to do. That can be helpful. So these are the things.
I’ve heard from a lot of people that are just waiting and I’m like, but don’t just wait, there’s so much to do. And then you’ll be ready when the moment is here. And you actually wrote that post a week ago, I guess?
Stephani 26:02
Yeah, but I think it was about a week ago now. Yeah.
Ali 26:04
And it felt when we booked the session, it felt like this was such an early conversation to me. Work, what’s that gonna look like and all of a sudden, it doesn’t feel so early anymore.
I also wanted to announce for all you Canadian practitioners here that the government this morning announced commercial rent relief. I don’t know if any of you heard about it, but you should look into it. It’s still very much early in being fully announced what it’s going to look like but it’s a 75% reduction in rent. I don’t know how they’re gonna manage it because it’s a lot of private landlords. So I don’t know if it’s going to be opt-in or if it’s going to be everyone has to do it, or what the exact rules are going to be around it, but it’s worth looking into. If you are Canadian and have a commercial lease, look into it. It’ll be a good one.
I wish we would have done faces. I wish we could see everybody.
So the rules of it is that the Canadian government is going to pay 50% of rent and then the landlords are expected to cover the 25%, and then the tenants are expected to cover 25%. But we’ll see what actually happens there.
Anyone have anything that they would like to ask Stephani?
Stephani 27:28
I was even going to say I think that what you’re saying using the telehealth screening calls is beneficial. It’s not yes or no, are you coming into the clinic? It’s kind of what are the options that are available and as long as college regulations and government guidelines continue to allow telehealth appointments, some people might be better off with an official, you don’t need to be coming into the clinic if you don’t need to.
If that’s not a way you can get the same amount if not better, or whatever treatment over a phone call or a secure video chat, then that telehealth screening call might even provide them a, Hey, we can be doing this while you’re from the comfort of your own home. Or Hey, you do need to be coming into the clinic for an appointment for us to get you feeling better, whatever it is that you’re working on.
Ali 28:13
And it definitely feels like a hybrid model definitely will make sense, if you are capable of performing telehealth treatment. So a lot of things like ICBC, I think they only cover initial visits if they’re in person, but some subsequent can be done by telehealth. So there’s some rules, some insurance rules about which ones have to be in person and which don’t and that can affect the way that you treat.
Stephani 28:39
Until last earlier this week or last week, my days are all confused now, but it used to be the same for any chiropractors. Chiropractors couldn’t be providing initial appointments and now their college is letting them. I think that things are changing all over and you just have to stay on top of what’s allowed.
Ali 28:55
Amy says that they’re doing emergency appointments. They’re using telehealth for the history of all new patients and then determining whether we can help them with home care or not.
So I think a lot of people are having success with just playing around with this now and you can start any of that now. Telehealth, you may as well sign up and start with it.
Someone wrote in and said, we don’t have telehealth and Jana said everybody has telehealth and Jane right now. If you want to use it, it’s there for you and it might be worth playing around with before clinics reopen and so that you can kind of get used to it.
You were talking about we’re going to have to scale up on how to provide care through a computer screen.
Stephani 29:32
I mean the few patients that I have been doing over virtual care, even like friends that I’ve been trying to help out with that are in pain from working at home, it’s different skills that’s required from the therapist’s point of view, it’s your observation skills have to be really fine-tuned because you don’t get to touch them while they’re squatting or whatever they’re doing, as well as your communication skills.
So you really have to have those thorough subjective assessments as well as descriptions for understanding exercises or trying to help your patient understand their pain or their problem better, so they can communicate it back to you.
So, there’s a lot of different skills that you can learn and grow, like you said, during this time by trying out the virtual appointments and using them now and what you can, and that’s just going to make you better even if you go back to just full time in clinic, it’s going to make you a better therapist overall.
Ali 30:24
Yeah, so maybe that’s a good point. Just practice with some friends. Practice what it’s like to talk someone through something. I think it’s funny.
Obviously, mental health practitioners have a very different experience. However, the reason I say mental health practitioners in Canada especially, we’re very slow to adopt technology and generally don’t like it very much. And so I am really interested to see if this sudden move to online changes in mental health in general across Canada or people will return to it in person. I think there’s obviously a lot of benefits to in-person conversations over time. I’m very curious to see what happens there.
Someone has asked me about the CDC handbook. I will post it. So this is the CDC handbook. If you go on to the CDC website in general, it’s actually just tons of checklists and great little info. It’s the US one and I’m sure the Canadian site has many of them as well. So do some searching around for your health ministry of your province or of your state. It will have lots of great online information like that.
Anyone have any other questions where we’re at our half-hour, I think we went through some of the things, I really just wanted to encourage people in a very short session to start thinking now about what it’s going to look like to open back up soon because I want the Jane practitioners to be like ready to go. I want them to be set up administratively. I want them to have everything that they need. I want them to be prepared. I just want everyone to be ready so that when our patients, globally and nationally are ready to return, the people are ready for them.
And some people I think are a little bit still a bit in shock.
Oh Naomi’s sewing retired sheets into pillowcases. Oh, good idea.
There’s so many things we could do.
What else are people doing to get ready?
Jennifer’s been doing telehealth for the past three weeks for follow-ups and assessments and it’s gone very well. That’s great.
Is it hourly? Hourly.
Having plexiglass. So you’re doing some work around the clinic to make it more safe.
Plastic sheet covers. Different supplies than you would normally have.
I think it’s really smart to assume that this is going to go on for a while. Let’s prepare.
It’s going to look different and someone said redesign, redesign and reopen is what we’re doing. Educating yourself about the virus and the history of epidemics.
I know I’ve read a lot about the Spanish plague over the last few weeks.
Stephani 33:11
I was doing a podcast on that yesterday. It’s very interesting. Didn’t know much before.
Ali 33:15
It’s very mislabeled. It was just that it was only reported on in Spain.
Distilleries are selling disinfectant sprays. That’s a good point. So if you’re having a hard time finding things that you’re going to use to disinfect, look at places that maybe aren’t typical.
Paul also renovated the reception area. Did you renovate it in light of COVID like to make it more safe or were you just like, it needs to be done and we’re doing it now because there’s time and there’s no one in there? So you made it more secure and also just use the time.
Sewing masks.
Yeah, Theresa is mentioning the Spanish flu and it did have a lesson of a second wave. So reopening too quickly could be risky. And that’s where I think the documentation and the contact tracing is important.
I always say to my kids, they’re not going out anywhere, they’re still in quarantine because kids are the most disgusting germ carriers of all time. I say to them, like, we have to assume we have it, you have to always assume you’re a carrier of it.
And so you just behave as if you are contagious. And so if you assume your patients are contagious, you assume you are contagious at all times and just behave appropriately.
Stephani 34:37
And I think practice, especially in person, it’s going to be slower and it’s maybe not what we all want but to be safe and to allow it to grow and hopefully not have too much of a second wave, you have to accept that it’s going to be slower, but it’s the right thing to do and it’s going to be safer and it’s going to be healthier for everyone.
Ali 34:55
Who was it that mentioned plastic table covers, people are wondering where you bought them or what you’re using? So Kara was mentioning she was getting plastic bag table covers from the massage warehouse. That’s awesome. And curtains from Target. You can be creative.
I have children so I have plastic bed covers that you can get from IKEA for mattress covers but more laundry. We got to stock up on laundry detergent because we’re going to be doing way more laundry than normal.
Anyone else have anything that they’re doing to prepare as we move into May, where we’re hoping to see a reopen? Is anyone planning on waiting and not reopening for at least another month? Or some of you are probably still practicing.
So some people are saying June. That’s good so you have a whole month to kind of work through this.
I think the plastic covers are just easier to sanitize, maybe removing them after each treatment.
Sherry’s trying to get back to practice ASAP.
Stephani 36:07
Upper Airway Specialists need to wait. Makes sense.
Ali 36:13
Amy’s saying for a short term hack for a barrier front desk, someone used a shower curtain. It’s just a barrier I guess for moistly speaking, as our prime minister said in a public press conference.
You have to wait till you’re allowed.
There’s a lot of provinces and states that are talking about May for opening back up.
Massage Warehouse is probably a great resource. Is it a BC company?
Stephani 36:48
I don’t know it but that could just be me.
Ali 36:50
I wonder if they deliver though I see everyone has got a cloth table so they need plastic. You can’t sanitize that.
Yeah. wipes and sprays.
And I think mental health practitioners, it’s probably easier. Although I’m trying to get my youngest son to do an ADHD assessment and they’re saying that they won’t do those until they’re in person. Which I guess makes sense. It’s kind of hard to assess my eight-year-old. So that’s waiting.
So online psych assessments can be done, and it’s hard to do mental health sessions in masks I can imagine.
Ali 37:41
Those of you who heard America, June would like you to check out the Prime Minister speaking moistly. There’s like so many memes that went around about that. Oh, my goodness.
SLP wearing masks, so it’d be hard for sure.
And I think we mentioned everyone’s their own unique story. So it’s all just trying to figure out what works for you.
Does anyone have ideas for a POS machine? We’re also launching integrated square terminals. So yes, come to our session this afternoon and you’ll learn all about the cool things that are being added to Jane by the end of the summer.
Everyone’s like, Alison, don’t say anything too soon. So we’ll be actually introducing everything so that I’m not making promises because I like to be excited about things. And then tap obviously is ideal. I know I do have loose lips here and you should have seen the internal thread everyone was like I’m both excited and scared that Alison might say things way too soon.
Stephani 38:58
They’re just gonna stop telling you in advance or something, if you don’t need to know it,
Ali 39:02
That’d be horrible. I get way too excited.
Okay, anyone have any last things that they want to share in the chat, any resources or ideas or tips? Hopefully you all are going to walk away with just a few ideas of things that you could do in the next few weeks or a little while to get prepared for returning to practice.
I love the idea of practicing some telehealth with your friends and family. If you haven’t started doing that already. We have a game called Gnomes at Night, and you sit across from each other and you can’t see the other person’s board but you have to work together to move your people. And so I just think it’s the best communication tool to try to explain through words what you want someone else to do. So get Gnomes at Night and play it.
Stephani 39:47
Practice your skills.
Ali 39:50
Stick with your convictions. Make things great.
A big thank you to Stephani. She gets nothing out of being here. And so lovely that you joined us today. And we’ll link you again to the blog.
Bianca, do you have that handy? I think she shared it right at the beginning.
Stephani 40:13
I love hearing everybody’s thoughts and ideas about what everyone’s doing and preparing to return back to practice and how everyone’s managing a bit differently, which is awesome.
Ali 40:20
Yeah, it’s really great. It’s a good conversation to have just as far as hopefully getting people encouraged that we are going to be returning to practice. Things will be opening back up again, and I would encourage you as well if you haven’t already, and you are a business owner or a clinic owner, go to our website, we’re continuously updating our COVID response plans for small businesses. And so stuff like the rent relief, that’s already been updated. We’re trying to update them daily.
So if you want to know what financial resources are available to you, as business owners, as clinic owners, as practitioners, even as employees, go to the website, check out small business plans. They’re there for both the United States and Canada.
Okay, everybody, thank you for joining us.
And we got just two more sessions left.
A big thank you again to Stephani and hopefully, we’ll see you all again and in an hour, two hours, go have some lunch.
Stephani 41:19
Awesome. Thanks, guys.
Ali 41:21
Okay, bye everybody.
Click here for the Returning to Work in a Hybrid World blog post.