Volunteers are needed for a vital new task with - can you help.
The first criteria for you is that you need to be a patient at Cerne Abbas Surgery. If you are not a patient at Cerne Abbas Surgery then this task is not for you.
Cerne Abbas Surgery have made provisional arrangements to be able to deliver this season’s flu vaccine (September/October) under the social distancing conditions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic. If the C-19 restrictions persist or become more stringent then these will be by drive through clinics in the local area. At present the NHS has decided that flu clinics can take place in village halls and schools etc provided a number of social distancing measures, PPE use etc are put in place by the surgeries.
In order to achieve this the surgery will need the assistance of a number of volunteers to assist in guiding and marshalling patients who attend the flu clinic outside the village hall so that social distancing is maintained outside the clinic. The role would likely be to work in pairs to gently remind patients to maintain their social distance, to ask some pertinent questions of patients before they enter the village hall to ensure they are suitable for admittance, to operate a remotely operated temperature check (as in some restaurants currently) and to give patients guidance on the process inside the hall and how they need to enter by one door and leave by a different door. You would be issued with suitable PPE by the surgery.
As a Cerne Abbas patient you would be offered an early flu vaccine at the same time as the medical staff at the surgery receive their vaccination agains flu and that would be a couple of weeks before everyone else. The reason others who are not Cerne Abbas patients cannot be vaccinated by Cerne Abbas Surgery is that the can only vaccinate their own patients.
If you are a Cerne Abbas Surgery patient and would like to volunteer as and when the date of the Hazelbury Bryan flu clinic date is decided then please email Allan Peters, Chairman of the Cerne Abbas Surgery Patient Participation Group (PPG) at allan@apcr.co.uk and include your full name, your email address, a mobile number if you have one and please include your age. We are sorry to ask for the age but the surgery may impose restrictions on who they may accept as volunteers based on age and vulnerability to C-19.
As soon as the date of the Hazelbury Bryan flu clinic is known you can then be asked by email if you are still available on that date to act as a volunteer.
When you do volunteer you will be guided and supported by members of the PPG through the process.
In assisting our respective surgeries to deliver the flu vaccine, and maybe a C-19 vaccine if one is ever produced, in a safe environment it will mean a number of further lives may not become victim to the already high tally caused by C-19, so your contribution to assisting in that process will be invaluable.