Dear Members,
On Sunday 22nd the NSW and Victorian governments announced shutdown to all "non-essential activity" and the South Australian, Northern Territory and Tasmanian governments closed their borders in order to slow the spread of covid-19. The national cabinet met to discuss increased measures to control the spread of covid-19 and announced stage 1 restrictions for non-essential activities. This caused confusion and anxiety for many independent clinics and small business owners on Sunday afternoon and evening.
This morning with press conferences from the respective state premiers there is more clarity over the situation with the following being required to shut down as of 12pm today.
This includes entertainment venues such as clubs, pubs, cafes, eat in restaurants (take away is permitted) cinemas, indoor sporting venues, gyms, churches, casinos and wedding venues. There is also a requirement to cease all non essential travel with everyone being encouraged to stay home as much as possible. The federal cabinet continue to meet and they have made it very clear that all Australians should do everything they can to limit the spread of covid-19 and that further restrictions are definitely on the table in order to save lives.
Essential Services? What does this mean for Dermal Health Professionals?
When talking about our businesses, our jobs, our livelihoods, we all see ourselves as essential and that's a very normal, healthy response. For the time being, places of work including allied health practices, hair and beauty clinics are not being closed. However, there is a requirement to adhere to social distancing regulations, with more enforcement of this by law enforcement being announced today.
Ethical Practice in a Pandemic Situation.
As ethical and evidence based practitioners, we all know that we must all do our part together in order to protect the most vulnerable in our community and slow the spread of covid-19. We have seen examples overseas of where this has and hasn't worked well already.
In a pandemic situation hygiene and infection control practices protect our clinics, staff and clients whilst they are with us but it is not enough to slow the spread due to movement and congregation of people. When performing risk assessment and analysis we all know that nothing, including PPE removes all risk of exposure and transmission entirely. Therefore avoidance is the only way to mitigate risk completely. We are asking our members to think ethically and ensure that we are not encouraging non-essential travel in our staff and clients and are respecting social distancing ensuring no more than 1 person per 4m2.
There is also currently a shortage of PPE that is desperately required by healthcare professionals dealing with those suffering from symptoms of covid-19. We are grateful for all of our frontline health care professionals and we want to support them in any way we can which includes not using these materials for non-essential services. When we work in close proximity to clients and require PPE at this time we need to evaluate if its ethical to use these resources for non-essential aesthetic and cosmetic procedures at this time.
So what do we do now: continuity of client care and your livelihoods?
As ethical practitioners you are all planning for continuity of care for your clients. This means embracing new ways of operating at this time and capitalising on your knowledge and education to use in new innovative ways. We have already observed over the past week the innovative ways that Dermal Clinicians are adapting their practice. We need to continue to think of how to provide new services and products to assist with maintaining skin health and integrity as well as managing common skin conditions and diseases more remotely. At this time, we understand the situation seems devastating however out of adversity comes ingenuity and these events may in fact be a stimulus to future proof our industry and your business.
Virtual Client Management
Rural health models demonstrate that tele-health or virtual consultations and assessments can be very effective methods for triaging treatment options and for education purposes, they can also play a role in treatment planning. It can also be associated with time and cost saving for clients and clinics. Establishing a method of doing this well, may also mean that you can service a wider range of clients from a much broader area than you can currently that will benefit you into the future. Whilst we may not perform physical treatments, we can provide evidence based skin care and home based strategies to improve skin health and manage conditions. As well as educate clients about what they can access and how to use it correctly to achieve optimal outcomes. As allied health professionals we already provide options and methods of home based care for when time and money are a constraint to patients coming into receive treatment.
Plan for the future
The decision to stay open or close is very difficult. For those of you that may decide to keep your doors open for now, please plan for the time this may change with updates to government advice and ensure you are complying with the social distancing guidelines. We need to also look after ourselves and our families in this time. We may be able to use the time work on ourselves and business. If anything positive can come of the situation, it's by supporting each other, working together as an industry and as businesses so that we can come out of this stronger than ever before.
We want you to know that as your professional body, we are here to assist in any way we can. Just reach out and tell us what you need.
What are the ASDC doing to support you?
The general committee is in regular discussions about how to support our members. We know that many of your will experience financial hardship and stress. We are currently working on how to support our members to stay current financial members including access to all of our learning resources as well as vital information. We are discussing currently how our fee structure for 2020 renewals may be altered to support you. There are also many online webinars and an online conference in the pipeline. We will keep you updated as these plans progress. We have activated a discussion forum on our website where we would love to hear from you about what you need.
Support and Resources
Members can access a raft of resources on our Covid-19 section of the member portal. In this section there is information and contacts for economic stimulus and business financial support. As well as hygiene practices and risk of exposure assessment tools. Below is also some information provided through the Australian Psycological Society on how to manage stress and anxiety associated with our current circumstances that may be useful in talking to your families, staff as well as for ourselves. It is too easy in this day and age of information overload to become overwhelmed.
Finally from the ASDC general committee, we want you to look after yourselves and know that we are working hard with your interests in mind.
Kind regards
Jennifer Byrne
ASDC Chairperson
on behalf of the General Committee
