COVID-19 & patient safety

COVID-19 and patient safety

Last updated on April 11th, 2023

In Summary:

If you have a confirmed case or possible COVID symptoms, please reschedule your appointment.

It is up to individuals, both visitors and staff, to choose if they would like to wear a face mask in the clinic. If any visitor feels uncomfortable with this, members of staff will wear a mask if requested.

For more detailed information, please see below.

From 11th April 2023 we have taken the decision for members of staff not to continue routinely wearing face masks in the clinic.

If you you are vulnerable to respiratory infections, immunosuppressed, feel uncomfortable about this, and would like us to wear a face mask, please inform a member of staff and we will do so.

The English and Welsh governments removed the requirement for face masks in healthcare settings in June 2022. Our members of staff continued to wear face masks and patients were encouraged to wear masks since that time to err on the side of caution. However, now that we are entering the spring, and hopefully seeing an end to the 2022-23 winter flu season we have decided to discontinue wearing masks as a matter of course. This decision is in line with a recent relaxation of mask wearing advice in the local hospitals. We will continue to provide masks for staff, patients and visitors who would like them, and staff will wear a mask if requested by a patient.

To help mitigate any risk, we continue to ask patients and staff not to come to the clinic if they have COVID or significant respiratory illness.

Background in our Response to the Pandemic:

Chiropractors and other medical services were specifically exempt from The Health Protections Regulations (Coronavirus Restrictions) that came into effect on 26th March 2020. British Chiropractic Association advice was more prescriptive and restrictive than the Government’s instructions. However, from 15th June we were able to resume risk assessed face-to-face consultations for all cases including routine / maintenance cases.

As registered health and care professionals, chiropractors have been permitted to remain open throughout the lockdown periods to provide care for patients, and patients have been permitted to travel to and from a chiropractor. Statutory Instrument 350 (Part 3, item 37 on page 10) and Statutory Instrument 1200 (Part 3, item 47 on page 32).

England moved to step 4 of the roadmap to ease COVID-19 restrictions on July 19th 2021.

Health and care settings were required to continue to maintain appropriate infection prevention and control processes as necessary, and so chiropractors were required to continue to wear PPE in line with the Department of Health and Social Care Infection Prevention and Control guidelines.

Throughout the pandemic, we have endeavoured to make the clinic as safe as possible for all our patients and staff. We made a number of changes to the clinic to help with social distancing, ensure strict hygiene standards, and to protect one another using Personal Protective Equipment.

As stated above, the English and Welsh governments removed the requirement for face masks in healthcare settings in June 2022. This was the last COVID measure to be removed. NHS England also published the National Infection Prevention and Control Guidance. These changes to the UK IPC Guidance signalled a step in the transition back to pre-pandemic IPC measures. Consequently, we have been able to slowly transition and remove the need for such strict social distancing and some of the PPE requirements. However we do continue to follow the current IPC guidance, make appropriate risk assessments and continue to monitor the situation.

If you have tested positive for COVID or have symptoms:

High temperature – your chest or back feel hot (you don’t need to measure your temperature)
New, continuous cough – coughing a lot for more than an hour, or 3 or more coughing episodes in 24 hours (if you usually have a cough, it may be worse than usual)
A loss of, or change in, your normal sense of taste or smell.

Then please avoid coming into the clinic and reschedule your appointment to help minimise the potential for further onward spread, and allow us to be able to continue treating patients.