We DO have the right equipment.

I am essentially a dentist or oral surgeon who receives referrals for the treatment of patients.

This is a huge privilege and I never forget how much of a privilege it is to have your colleagues trust you with their patients but it is also a fascinating insight into what is going on in the wider dental community.

The practices I have are responsible for taking referrals from hundreds of general dental practitioners, both for NHS oral surgery and orthodontics and private oral surgery, implants, restorative dentist, endodontics, periodontics, orthodontics and dental imaging.

I am often staggered by the quality of referrals we receive in both directions, there are some practices where I would be proud to have my dentistry done and you can tell that immediately when the patients open their mouths or even talk about the dentists. But there are, on occasion, the opposite.

I have been struck by a growing trend of referrals that I have seen coming in to one of my practices (not a massive amount but definitely an increased number) which states the following:

‘Please extract (appropriate tooth listed) as we do not have the correct equipment’

This baffles me on so many levels as I do not know where to start.

As I have said for many years, if there was a question on family fortunes, which said ‘we asked 100 members of the public what procedures a dentist carries out’, I am pretty sure that tooth extraction or filling would be the top answer. If a dental practice does not have the equipment to extract a tooth, even surgically, what do they have the equipment to do?

There is a large gap opening up in the middle of dentistry as far as I can see. On one side there are the good guys and on the side there are the guys that don’t have the equipment.

We do have the correct equipment.

Posted on 22/01/2012 by Marie Kiley | This entry was posted in Dentistry, General and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.