Deborah Bell chats to Julie King, Owner of Wetheral Dental Practice, about her approach to COVID-19.
“After going into lockdown, like most other mainly private practices, I furloughed some of my team,. Since then those that remain have taken it in turns to go into the practice for a morning or afternoon to do telephone triage.
We’re here for advice and when you give advice, especially to a demographic that is being shielded or isn’t mobile, you don’t then want them getting on a bus to get their prescriptions or source temporary repair kits. So we’re dropping antibiotics off at the door if patients can’t go out to collect them, and delivering toothypeg kits or re-cementing kits to the door or through the post.
Our practice is in a rural community with a large elderly population, so if they need something during this time, we’re trying to find a way to help to get it to them.
I don’t think we’re going above and beyond by doing this kind of thing, I think it should be what’s expected of the local dentist in their community. We’re just doing what we can to keep them safe and well.
Communicating with patients
We’ve had a couple of new patient enquiries, and we’ve had some lovely patients just ringing in to see how we’re doing or for a chat.
We’re cancelling appointments around one to two weeks in advance and some are asking us about appointments that have been previously booked in for the following month and whether they’re going ahead, but at the moment that’s impossible to answer.
I’ve been keeping my mobile phone number on so that patients can contact me on that if they need me including our small number of NHS patients. This I hope will lessen the burden on 111 who are really busy at the moment.
Preparing for reopening
There’s been a lot of liaising with other dentists about best practice, and trying to make sure we’re ready for when we can see our patients again. The local LDC have been in constant contact.
I’ve tried to get ahead of the game where we can, so I’ve done some online training approved by Public Health England for fit-testing the FFP3 masks for when we are back in work.
We’ve got an urgent treatment list for people whose appointments we’ve had to cancel who we will get back into the practice as soon as we can do aerosol treatment again.
We’ll have to zone the diary with older or shielded patients coming in at the beginning of the day, and we’ll most likely be working longer hours.
There will also need to be some training for when the rest of the team come back, especially regarding the patient journey, once we get the standard operating procedure (SOP) advice.
The patient journey will be very different. We don’t know everything yet about the specifics, but we are probably going to be operating a one-in one-out system with no one in the waiting room. Patients will wait in their cars and we’ll call them on their mobile to come into the practice. And we have a digital thermometer ready so that we can take patients’ temperatures.
We have to follow whatever guidance and advice comes out, but we need to try and be as prepared as possible and that’s what I, and a lot of my colleagues, are focusing on now.”
