I am going to attempt to set up a webinar for us so we can talk about what the standard for podiatry should be in Canada.
I will attempt to have an infectious disease specialist join us. I'd like to talk about surgical standards, PPE, patient flow etc.
Let's not rely on anyone else setting our pace here.
Stay tuned and start chewing on this:
I have attended several meetings recently with general surgeons, vascular surgeons, orthopedists, podiatrists and oral surgeons. It is important that we fine tune returning to practice to our specific needs but we must also stay in line with best practices, risk of liability etc.
1- surgeons are recommending COVID testing 96 hours before planned surgery and quarantine until test results and day of surgery. If that becomes standard of care then we are screwed if we don't have access to testing.
2-evidence that surgery on patient with asymptomatic/untested covid may exacerbate symptoms if they get sick
3-there will be a long wait for orthopedists to do surgery in the hospital due to restricted OR times, we should emphasize our ability to do surgery safely in outpatient surgery suites, even invite Ortho to operate in our facilities (assistant fees, OR set up etc for us). Too bad for the orthos that they don't have the setup for office-based, outpatient surgery, we are way ahead of them in this regard.
4-we need to standardize PPE for our purposes. No one with respiratory symptoms should be attending our clinics so rarely will we need N95 masks or isolation gowns.
5- we need to push COCOO to help our patients and blame them directly for EVERY poor outcome
6-I have so far been encouraged by the reception I have received from a PC MPP down here and have been providing him information all along. His office tells me that they "are hammering" Ministry of Health on the matter
