AN OVERDUE UPDATE

AN OVERDUE UPDATE

Hope you all coped alright with the sudden lockdown. Those sunny days were amazing!

The clinic has re-opened for appointments now we are bacl to Level 2 restrictions.

Patients are required to sign in by phone or make their own manual record of visiting, while we keep a log of all attendees. Masks are required and we can wear shields so you can see us speaking.

It his being an interesting and challenging year – Helen retired and her initial replacement was with us for 3 months before we recruited Mr Geeth Dharmasena to take on the new role of office manager/technical support to the audiology staff. We needed to enhance this role from purely administration as supply chain timing, quality, and goods arrival state has suddenly changed with most manufacturer earpiece production being off-shore now.

Geeth was born in Sri Lanka and has moved to NZ after living in the UK and carrying out a similar audiology admin and support role at Cambridge Hospital there. His wife is a Specialist at Chch Hospital and he has 2 teenage sons at high school, while his daughter remains at University in the UK. We hope you have the chance to meet him soon and we are teaching him all the kiwi phrases we take for granted like “feeling a wee bit crook”.

There was an office restructure earlier in the year after Helen’s retirement and we reshaped to three admin staff with Brenda, Nancy and Geeth. Unfortunately, since then Nancy has become stuck in the UK with a family bereavement and now another family member is in ill health - and the MIQ bed situation is difficult to negotiate to get her back. We have had some temporary help in the office while the next decisions re staffing have to be made.

The clinical staff of Sandra, Ruth, Ashleigh, Aynsley and Jeanine remains the same.

Let’s hope we can all stay well …. and do get in touch if you need to.