Welcome to the 11th edition of the Rotunda Hospital GP Connect newsletter – designed to keep you updated on new developments at the Rotunda and to provide educational advice on clinical topics of interest.
We are now firmly in the midst of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and ongoing complete community lockdown, which is having a significant impact on how we provide clinical services for our patients and our referring doctors. This includes restrictions on hours of visiting at the hospital, who can visit the hospital, who can accompany patients to the hospital, and efficacy of providing certain clinical services in a “virtual” format.
We have been fortunate at the Rotunda to have the benefit of an extremely dynamic hospital laboratory, which has enabled us to provide rapid PCR-based diagnostics for COVID-19, delivering results in some cases in 1-2 hours. Additionally, following HSE-mandated care pathways, we have instituted COVID-19 testing for all admissions to the hospital, including both elective and emergency admissions. We have also commenced our COVID-19 vaccination drive, with 80% of our staff already vaccinated, as well as being able to vaccinate some of our local GPs because of the efficiency of our teams in extracting the maximum possible vaccine doses.
While we look forward to the end of COVID-19 restrictions at some point in 2021 when the pandemic hopefully comes under control, we are most grateful for the significant cooperation and support that we have received from you, our GP colleagues in managing this once-in-a-generation challenge. We have also learned new ways of delivering services during the pandemic that have forced efficiencies that we will continue into the future.
We look forward to interacting virtually with as many of our GP colleagues as possible at our next GP Study Evening, scheduled for March 9.
Yours sincerely,
Professor Fergal Malone,
Master, The Rotunda Hospital
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