GDPs work an average of 36.9 hours per week in dentistry, with contract holders working 41.4 hours and associates 36 hours. 70.7% is worked in the NHS and 29.3% privately in mixed practice. Overall, dentists’ time is split 77.8% on clinical work and 22.2% on non-clinical work (including administrative and management duties).
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Public Health England has published a report which shows that young children exceed sugar recommendations, but are having fewer sugary drinks. Children aged four to 10 years are consuming more than double the recommended amount of sugar and teenagers more than three times. But consumption of sugary drinks has fallen compared to six years ago.
Read more: Young children having too much sugar but fewer sugary drinks
An inquest in Cambridge into the death of Dr Helen Nicoll has found that she hung herself in the hall of her £1.5million house in the Cambridgeshire village of Great Wilbraham following a violent argument with her husband on June 4, 2015. Her behaviour had become increasingly erratic after a patient of 20 years began trying to sue her in February 2015.
Retired dentist, Lord Colwyn, was speaking in a debate on the NHS in the House of Lords. He stressed the importance to the ‘long-term sustainability of the NHS of improving the nation’s oral health and ensuring good dental care’. He raised the issues of people visiting their GP with toothache and the high number of children be admitted to hospitals for extortions.
Dentists are less likely to prescribe antibiotics after they receive a personalised report detailing their past prescription rates, according to a randomised controlled trial of UK dentists published in PLOS Medicine, by Linda Young, NHS Education for Scotland, UK, Jan Clarkson, University of Dundee and Craig Ramsay, Health Services Research Unit, University of Aberdeen, and colleagues.
Read more: Ways to decrease dentists antibiotic prescribing investigated
Speaking at the NHS Expo conference in Manchester, Dr Sara Hurley. CDO England, said the “worried well” are going to the dentist too often and are taking appointments away from patients who need them. She was launching a national preventive campaign, Smile4Life, which will encourage the public to treat dental health as a lifelong issue.
Read more: CDO urges patients to kick the 6-month check-up habit
The Government’s child obesity strategy, including oral health, has been put on ice after delays of almost a year. However Health Committee chair, Sarah Wollaston MP says she hopes to use her Committee’s influence to strengthen before it is published in the autumn.
Read more: Obesity strategy delayed but Wollaston hopes for improvements
Professor Liz Kay has been appointed as a specialist committee member on the oral health promotion in care homes and hospitals Quality Standards Advisory Committee at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE). Liz said: ‘This is a huge honour and a great opportunity to help form improvements to oral health promotion in health care environments where there is need.’
Read more: Liz Kay to help improve oral health in care homes
The Times reports that hundreds of thousands of GP appointments are being taken by patients with toothache as they try to avoid rising fees for NHS dentists. The article, co-written by health editor Chris Smyth and GDP, Neel Kothari, says that data from a study of 280,000 GP consultations over ‘tooth problems’ was used to estimate that 600,000 appointments a year are made by patients seeking dental care, costing the NHS more than £26 million a year.
Read more: Patients going to GP with toothache cost NHS £26 million