Jason Wong, chief dental officer (CDO) for England, discusses the government’s priorities for dentistry and what it is doing to create change.
As a dentist, many of my colleagues and I can see quite clearly how the field of dentistry has been evolving in England. With better technologies, we’re now better able to treat many issues with new cutting-edge treatments.
It is vital that we do more to improve access, and we are working with you all to make it quicker and easier for those who need it most to be seen and treated on the NHS.
Various initiatives introduced over the past few years, including incentives for relocation to underserved areas, are helping to move us towards a solution – and a key part of this approach is the government and NHS rolling out an extra 700,000 urgent dental appointments next year.
What will be included in the 10-year plan for health?
This shift in the way we do things reflects the goals of the upcoming 10-year plan for health:
- Moving care from the hospital into the community
- Changing how we care from analogue to digital
- Shifting our focus on prevention instead of treatment.
As well as access, action on prevention is vital. It is clear that people’s daily routines, such as diets high in processed sugars, negatively impact oral health. I am therefore in support of the government’s rollout of supervised toothbrushing in early years settings across England, as community-based programmes like these remain essential to building good oral habits that last well into adulthood.
While the government’s upcoming 10-year plan will set a clearer direction for how dentistry will support this change, it’s crucial that we as a sector understand how we can each locally support changes.
Skill mix
This support includes committing to greater flexibility in how we care for patients by sharing the workload to other dental professionals. The research to support skills mix in dentistry is overwhelming, which is why we’ve already confirmed that both dental therapists and dental hygienists can begin and end courses of treatment – and we know that this can go a long way toward improving workload.
We should also remember as we expand the use of the wider dental team about the largest registrant group, the dental nurses, and the smallest registrant group the, clinical dental technicians, who can make a bigger contribution to oral health care in England by working to the top of their scope of practice.
As a profession, we must remain committed to advocating to make dentistry better and making informed decisions. For example, NIHR no longer recommends six monthly check-ups for those with good oral health, and this frees up time for us to provide more care for those who need it.
Change is on the horizon, and while these dental appointments are an excellent first step, we’ve been hearing very clearly from dentists that the dental contract is in need of reform, and that’s why we’re working with the government to shape the upcoming 10-year plan for health and give dentistry the generational boost it rightly deserves.
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