As frustration continues over access issues in NHS dentistry, Pramod Subbaraman discusses the alarming level of abuse that professionals are experiencing from patients.
Over the past few months, I have noticed an increase in abuse by patients in various NHS settings. I’ve heard of this from hospital colleagues and from colleagues in high street dentistry.
There are factors unique to each setting but let me comment on my experience here.
Patients have used foul language and treated me with utter disrespect, some have even attempted an invasion of my personal space in an aggressive manner.
Expression of desperation?
There are times when I wonder if the racists within some of them emerge and give me a harder time than they would a white British dentist. We may be able to dismiss such behaviour as the expression of desperation during an episode of suffering, but should we? Did any of us sign up to being abused at the hands of patients?
I for one did not. I’m there to work and help patients but no wage is high enough for me to go to work in fear for my personal safety, health or life.
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No-tolerance policies are good on paper. But there are ethical and practical considerations when the relevant patient is in severe pain and the dentist at the receiving end of abuse may be the only person available to provide care in the situation.
There is no one-size-fits-all solution, but we need to understand the underlying causes of the patient experience which results in such behaviour.
Elephant in the room
NHS dentistry has been chronically underfunded. That is the elephant in the room. Unless we address it, we cannot attract dentists to work in it. We cannot hope to provide more or better services for our patients.
They don’t understand the goings-on at the treasury or in the various health departments, which hold the purse strings and commission services.
All that they see is a dental practice or a dentist unable to see them or to provide them with what they believe to be the treatment that they need. They then attack the visible end of that spectrum: dentists and their teams.
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