05/06/2020
Dear Patient,
Hope you are well.
Further to last week’s email, just a quick update on how things now stand at the practice. There’s a lot of hard work going on behind the scenes at the moment but we’re pleased to report that slow and steady progress is finally being made.
Dentists finally received their new ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ from the Office of the Chief Dental Officer yesterday lunchtime, one and a half working days before they are allowed to re-open, not ideal!
Fortunately we had pre-empted many of the new rules and ordered equipment accordingly, as a result much of the Protective Personal Equipment we need to re-open is now either here or on it’s way.
The new, much larger, respirator masks that we must now wear need to be ‘fit tested’ by an accredited trainer, these are pretty hard to find as every one of England’s 10,000 dental practices are currently trying to hire them! Hopefully we will have our testing in the middle of next week.
All that then remains are the physical changes that need to take place in our building and the in depth training of the staff in all our new procedures.
Thursday’s guidelines state that we are to continue our telephone triaging and remote prescription service as we have been since March 25th when the Government forced all dental practices to close their doors. This service currently runs 7 days a week.
Patients triaged over the phone will be asked a number of questions about their dental problem and also their Covid-19 status, these questions are provided by the Office of the Chief Dental Officer.
If the patient’s answers meet a set criteria we may then be able to arrange an appointment at the practice and offer a limited number of treatment options to treat pain and swelling.
All visits to the practice must currently be pre-arranged through our telephone triaging system. The practice building will remain closed to all other visitors.
Patients who have already contacted us during lockdown will be telephoned by the practice and re-triaged (as detailed above) with a view to offering priority treatment appointments.
This is the beginning of a ‘phased return’ to normal dentistry and at this early stage regular check-ups, fillings and scaling are still not permitted.
This unfortunately means further unavoidable cancellations of routine appointments .
We are trying to contact all affected patients individually in this regard and look forward to these regular treatments being allowed again in the very near future. We await further guidance on this, always bearing in mind that safety must come first!
Your next visit to the practice will be quite different to normal, patients will be telephoned ahead of their appointment to run through our new routines and will also be directed to a video detailing the ‘patient’s journey through the practice’. This may include measures such as patients waiting in their vehicles prior to being called in for their appointments in order to reduce the number of people in the practice at any one time.
Please don’t be unnerved by these new and temporary measures or by the fact that, the next time you see them, your regular dentist and nurse may be buried under so much safety equipment that they resemble characters from Star Wars. It will still be the normal team underneath and we’ll be very pleased to see you all again!
Kind regards,
Leeds Road Dental Practice
