Heaton Acupuncture Clinic

Interview: Feras Jerjis, Dip Ac MBAcC, Traditional Acupuncturist

Newcastle

Heaton Acupuncture Clinic are an established practice of traditional oriental medicine with combined experience of over 40 years. Their services include acupuncture, gua sha and Chinese herbal medicine.

What are/have been the main challenges (financial, logistical, etc.) because of the lockdown?

Essentially for the last 100 days or so the clinic has been in hiatus.  Thankfully the local council has been very supportive to all small businesses and without their financial help we would not have been able to keep going, so the funding they provided has been instrumental in allowing us to change the way we work so we can give the patients the peace of mind in terms of social distancing, hygiene etc so they can have their treatment without any worries.

What are the challenges of opening the clinic again?
Are there things that are helping such as funding or new ways of working?

We will be doing some online consultations just to reduce the face to face talking time with patients and we will phase that in slowly as at the moment we are booked up essentially with our existing patients for the next few weeks.

Obviously, there is some anxiety regarding getting back to a normal flow of patients but we are observing the hygiene standard of any GP practice or equivalent.  I don’t think it will change the fundamental nature of our service but we might have to speak to people slightly less, we also make sure that all the treatment rooms are well ventilated which is essential for keeping everybody safe.

Website: https://heatonacupuncture.co.uk