Dentist visit

I was interested to observe how the dental practice I attended with my son today was handling the current threat of virus spread.

As a former dentist I’m all too aware of the pressure on the profession at this time of year. Often there’s the race to complete the annual funding target by the end of March – or risk having to pay a chunk back and possibly loose a portion of the funding next year (or potentially even the entire NHS funding for the practice if it’s a repeat ‘offence’).

This year the spanner in the works is the Coronavirus doing the rounds – with only weeks to go to meet the target and balancing the risk of keeping patients attending versus closing down.

Of course dental practices are very well equipped to ensure they minimise cross-infection. This has been a major part of dental practice policy and routine for many years. As dental professionals we would appear to be in the front line as far as potentially contracting infections spread by people in close proximity – and in my experience some patients do continue to attend despite having coughs and colds; even when they are off work because of that very thing.

I am happy to report that I felt totally safe – hand gel supplied at the practice and pretty much business as usual in this highly aware environment.