Coronavirus Update

25th September 2020

Thanks to the hard work of our team during this difficult time and the co-operation and understanding of our patients we have further increased our capacity to be able to offer as many face to face appointments as possible whilst adhering to the stringent procedures as detailed below. Despite the national pandemic alert level now being at 4 we will continue to provide the dental care as we are currently until the level is reduced to 2 when we aim to resume routine treatment and examinations. We are confident in the rigorous infection control procedures undertaken to protect our team and patients and the service offered should only change if regulations are amended to restrict the provision of dental care.
We now have a door open to the practice to give access to patients with appointments only. Please continue to call us to if you have a dental problem or would like advice as we are not able to arrange appointments in person due to restrictions in available space whilst maintaining physical distancing.

When attending a pre-arranged appointment please wear a face covering and arrive only just prior to your scheduled time as we have limited waiting room space, bringing with you only what you need. We are not accepting cash at present but welcome card payments or online bank transfers where applicable.

We re-commenced face to face appointments from June 8th with limited treatment options and further extended this on 20th July to include aerosol generated procedures (AGP). The implementation of this was only undertaken following extensive research in collaboration with the current guidance from all official bodies and through practice risk assessments.
The procedures necessary for the safety of our patients and dental team are, at the least, arduous and demanding. Following a procedure involving a drill, ultrasonic scaler or air and water spray (AGP) the surgery must be left empty for 60 minutes in accordance with regulation before deep cleaning can even commence. The dental team in surgery are now kitted out in single use long sleeve gowns, full respirator type FFP3 masks, surgical masks covering this and full-face visors. Our infection control procedures have always been robust, and you can be assured that all the measures advised to protect our patients and team are being taken.

The time constraints involved and physical distancing requirements restricting the number of surgeries in use, as I’m sure you will appreciate, have impacted greatly on our capacity to provide appointments. We are currently able to see less than 40% of the volume of patients that we would have been treating prior to the pandemic for these reasons. We appreciate the frustration caused when we are unable to offer routine and non-urgent treatments and we share this as we have been here throughout the lockdown period triaging calls, offering advice, prescriptions, referrals and appointments as necessary. As is the situation with most practices we will continue to prioritise the most urgent dental care needs. It may be that your dentist will need to call you back, therefore, we ask that you keep us updated with any changes to your contact details and we welcome emailed photographs as part of our triaging.

We all look forward to seeing you in the, hopefully, not too distant future under less constricting circumstances and thank you again.
Remember….Hands, Face, Space!