BDHF reports "upsurge" in calls to helpline
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- Published: Tuesday, 20 October 2015 07:30
- Written by News Editor
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The British Dental Health Foundation (BDHF) has reported an upsurge in calls to its Dental Helpline, for the second consecutive year. It says those seeking advice about their dental health over the last 12 months has increased by 17% compared with last year. Nigel Carter, Chief Executive of BDHF believes the success of the Dental Helpline is down to its sustained presence of providing independent and expert advice.
The BDHF is finding greater availability and accessibility to cosmetic dentistry, the prominence of sugar and diet in the media, and on-going confusion regarding access to NHS dentists are resulting in considerably more of the public turning to the Dental Helpline for answers. It has taken almost half a million calls since it was setup in 1997. The largest number of requests to Dental Helpline over the last year were regarding prosthetic dentistry (15%) followed by advice on finding a dentist (11%), NHS Dentistry regulations (10%) and dentist charges (8%).
Nigel Carter, Chief Executive of the BDHF believes the success of the Dental Helpline is down to its sustained presence of providing independent and expert advice. He says: “For almost 20 years we have been, and continue to be, extremely proud of our Dental Helpline as it strives to maintain and exceed the exceptionally high standards in providing support for anyone who calls us in need for advice. Whether people are sitting at home and have a thought or are sitting in the dentist waiting room and need urgent advice, the Dental Helpline has become an important tool for many thousands of people when it comes to providing free and impartial information on a whole range of topics relating to dental health.
“Because we want to ensure our Dental Helpline is the best it can possibly be, we appoint independent quality control from the Faculty of General Dental Practice of the Royal College of Surgeons of England, and are a proud member of the Helplines Partnership. Going forward we want to help even more people and are encouraging everyone to get in touch not only via our phone line but also through Twitter and Facebook. The more requests we get, the more people we can help and the more we can help to improve the health of the nation’s mouths.”
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