PRESIDENT'S REPORT

The President’s

Report DR AMIT GURBUXANI ADAWA PRESIDENT

I hope everyone had a relaxing break over the Christmas and New Year shutdown. This year promises to be an interesting time for all of us. The genie is out of the bottle: border opening or not, we are going to have to adapt in different ways with the spread of COVID-19 in Western Australia. But adapt and overcome we will! At ADAWA we have been collecting resources for all our members, which we are updating on our website regularly and sending out information to our members as and when we receive it, be it via email or social media.

Despite limited official information from the Government in regards to the practise of dentistry in our State, I have noticed that many of our members have been very proactive in comparison to our initial hit with COVID-19 two years ago. The awareness of the considerations within the "Risk Management Principles for Dentistry" document that we sent out and the uptake on the opportunity to perform fit testing for N95-P2 masks shows that our ADAWA community is ready to step up and overcome all the challenges that we are going to face in the future. My advice to our members and especially practice owners is that every practice is different, hence using this time to prepare your staff protocols and formulate a customised framework for your practice on how to deal with different COVID-19 scenarios based on mild, moderate, and high community spread, would be a good idea. We don’t have all the answers in this dynamically changing environment, but our ADAWA staff, CEO, Executive, Council, and especially our ADAWA Infection Control Committee have been working tirelessly to collect and filter through all the resources available to forward it to members. We are strengthening our relationship with our AMAWA colleagues too, as together we shall have a louder voice to be heard. Plus, hopefully by working together, we shall be able to source additional avenues for limited supplies that will be critical for our members. On another note, COVID-19 will not stop the other constructive work performed at ADAWA. At the end of 2021, we welcomed our most recent graduated cohort of UWA dentists for 2021, by holding a Welcome to Profession event. This event, which was started a few years ago by ADAWA, is an opportunity to introduce new dentists to the stalwarts within our profession. This event is covered further in this issue of the Western Articulator. In addition to all the above efforts at ADAWA, in early 2022 your Executive and Council are going to undergo training with the AICD (Australian Institute for Company Directors) to help ensure that the ADAWA leadership is taken to the next level and strengthened for future challenges. We have also selected our branch Committee chairs for 2022 and we will be having a Strategy Day very soon to help formulate our action plan for 2022. Uncertain but exciting times ahead, nevertheless, it is nothing that we can’t conquer together.

The genie is out of the bottle: border opening or not, we are going to have to adapt in different ways with the spread of COVID-19 in Western Australia. But adapt and overcome we will!