With the face-to-face contact that we’ve lost due to the pandemic, it’s been difficult to maintain our personal and professional connections, and nearly impossible to form new ones. That said, we are primary and comprehensive eye care providers, making us the patient’s first line of defense. Therefore, to best treat our patients, we must continue to maintain and build new relationships with others, so that we can reach out and ask questions, and talk about the best care for our patients.

Other providers to have collaborative relationships with should, of course, include subspecialists within our own profession, as well as those from areas like primary care, rheumatology and neurology. Such ties allow us to keep our knowledge up to speed and consider different points of view, which is a huge benefit to our patients.

Like many professionals, we’ve been creative with using different communication tactics to replace in-person events, like virtual conferences and webinars. But the best solution is often the simplest: the phone. We should simply call those we already know to check in, and introduce ourselves to other providers. We’ll be doing a great service to our patients and ourselves. OM