What you've missed this week

Missed out on this week’s dental news? No problem, here’s what happened over the past seven days…

Just how bad does it have to get?

NHS dentistry

Michael Watson details exactly what’s going wrong in NHS dentistry and what the Government needs to do to resolve it.

Pulling apart the NHS he highlights three areas that need addressing:

NHS funding
Recruitment now and post Brexit
Dental contracts and UDAs.

Michael Watson claims that a crisis is just on the horizon for NHS dentistry and the Government needs to act now to stop this ‘dire situation’.

Two-thirds of patients don’t know they can make a formal complaint to their dentist

complaints

Almost two thirds (65%) of patients aren’t aware dentists are required to provide a formal process for managing complaints.

A new survey from Dental Protection has found also found that 16% of patients would consider going straight to the GDC if they had a complaint.

Despite this, half of patients would expect an apology if something were to go wrong with their treatment and most patients (74%) would expect the dentist to offer further treatment free of charge to fix the problem if treatment hadn’t gone as expected.

London students six times more likely to be accepted on medicine and dentistry university courses

Students from London are six times more likely to be accepted on to medicine and dentistry university courses, compared with those in the north east.

This is according to a recent study from the Press Association, which discovered that 245 students in the north east of England undertook medicine and dentistry degrees in 2017, compared with 1,585 in London.

Across all subjects, 21% of students were from London, whilst only 4% came from the north east.

Brits spending £196 every year on their oral health

British adults spend almost £200 a year purchasing oral health care products, a new survey has found.

With an average spend of £16.34 every month per person on oral health products, the Oral Health Foundation believes people are placing more emphasis on good oral health.

The highest spenders on their oral health were Londoners (£25.53), whilst Sheffield (£7.46) came in bottom of the table.

Three quarters of Brits proud of their smile

smile

Around three quarters (73%) of Brits like or love their smile, according to a new survey from the Oral Health Foundation.

More than half (55%) were ‘highly positive’ about their smile, with 18% displaying an even greater love for it.

Men are more likely to show off their smile (80%) than women (67%), the survey also shows.

Oxford (86%) is the city where most people are confident of their smile, followed by Birmingham (85%), London (82%) and York (76%).

Aberdeen (53%) is the place people are most likely to negatively see their smile, with Nottingham (43%), Bristol (42%), Coventry (39%) and Leeds (38%) rounding off the top five.

Five Go Forth – dental consultants tackle 960-mile bike ride

A quintet of dentistry’s most well-known consultants will ride from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise £50,000 for charity.

Les Jones and Chris Barrow speak to Dentistry.co.uk in this video about why they are undertaking the challenge.