COVID PRACTICE PROTOCOLS

 1    Provide triage, advice, information, referrals and prescriptions whilst face to face is ill advised.

   From the start of the lockdown we have been available over the phone to give advice, diagnose as far as possible and prescribe where necessary.

   We also work with a practice that has been government supported as an emergency dental hub and has stayed open irrespective of lockdown or Covid levels.

2    Set the infection level parameters for a safe return to "face to face" full clinical procedures.

We regularly review when we think normal safe dentistry should resume. Our idea on this is based on the levels of Coronavirus circulating in the population. We are confident about our new Surgery Procedure Protocols to ensure safety BUT the background risk of airborne infection is too high when infection rates are above 1 in 50. Ideally we would hope for infections below 1 in 1,000. We will reopen once this happens. Infection levels are currently expected to fall drastically from late February through to mid-March. We will update as this improves. We will look at hospital admissions, infection levels, improving Covid therapeutic treatments and vaccine roll out impact.

3   Upgrade equipment, times between patients, surgery layouts, training and procedures appropriate to the Coronavirus risk.

Coronavirus will probably create a "new normal" for at least 2021. This means that we have substantially changed how the practice operates.

We have installed (Swiss) "hospital standard" air filtration and we all currently work behind fully filtered full face hoods....sadly we look a bit like virologists or astronauts.

We no longer operate a "waiting room or toilet facility" Patients are called in directly from our rear car park straight into our surgeries. Patients are triaged for Covid beforehand and will have their temperature checked on the day. We might incorporate vaccine status as part of our risk assessment.... subject to guidance on this.

We operate a fallow period between patients whilst also using hospital air filtration. We change all contact clothing between patients which is beyond hospital standards where on a Covid Ward the assumption is that everyone is infected.

This creates far greater operator stress and therefore we only see 2 or rarely three patients per clinical session.

4  Monitor the science....at the moment we are looking at emerging mutations and the vaccination roll out.

We have been monitoring the science from January 2020 as the threat emerged and have been told that our responses in the earlier stages was 2 weeks ahead of the curve.

Unfortunately the UK has had one of the worst responses to Coronavirus anywhere in the world.

Our sole objective is to keep our patients, ourselves and our staff alive and healthy.... luckily we have sufficient autonomy to make purely clinical decisions related to safety.

The ethos here is that you do not risk Coronavirus infection for routine dental care, minor dental issues or even greater issues if they can be controlled by advice, antibiotics or referrals as required.

There will be a time when we can get back to the routine aspects or near routine aspects of life.