Things keep moving with the Covid-19 situation, as I'm sure you're aware. When I wrote on Monday that we were having to limit ourselves to emergency treatment, the country hadn't yet entered its period of lockdown that we are in now.
Our most recent advice from the Chief Dental Officer and the British Dental Association is that we should not be seeing patients face to face at all. To this end we have set up a telephone triage service and are able to provide (limited quantities) of;
- Advice
- Analgesics (painkillers)
- Antibiotics
This is proving very odd as, for most of my practising career, we have always been advised that antibiotics should be a last resort, and not used to treat toothache. Still, these are strange times we are going through...
Beyond this, the local dental authorities are in the process of setting up urgent care centres where people can have dental emergencies treated safely, both for the patients and the staff. This is hoped to come on line next week but there are no details at present.
I apologies heartily to all our patients that we are unable to fulfil our duty to you at the moment, but please be assured we are doing our best.
A big thanks also to all of our Denplan patients. By being members of Denplan you are supporting the practice through these tough times, and ensuring that we can pay our staff even when practice income has fallen. We are really grateful to you all.