I’m still seeing 60% of my patients online. That means I only have the germs of 10 patients (plus their parents and myself) cycling through my treatment room. It also means that in the case I need to quarantine it will change nothing for the treatment of most of my patients. For the best telehealth appointments I do the following…
- I use an external microphone so my patients can hear me more clearly.
- I use headphones so I can hear the patients more clearly.
- Despite them, it’s still often difficult to hear their production of /s/ so I target /z/ instead. My one patient who was voicing /s/ is in-person so I can hear how she’s doing.
- I positioned my computer desk in front of a window so I can do the 20/20/20 rule my optometrist gave me for my “Zoom eye problems.” With this rule I try to look at something 20 feet away for 20 seconds every 20 minutes that I’m on the computer. Since my appointments are 45-minutes each I only do it half as often as I should, but my eyes still feel SO much better! I’ve formed the habit of taking care of things around the office between appointments to give my eyes a rest. These measures, combined with my blue-light-filtering lenses have helped my eyes a ton!
- I keep hand sanitize on my desk and use it often, despite the fact that 99.95% of COVID-19 infections are transmitted through the air (so only .05% of them are from fomite transmission, which is transmission from surfaces).