Patients can't see a dentist at short notice

doi:10.1136/bmj.39605.426192.3A

BMJ 2008;336:1323 (14 June), doi:10.1136/bmj.39605.426192.3A

Letters

Epidemic of dental abscesses?

Patients can’t see a dentist at short notice

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

The amount of dental problems general practitioners see seemsto have risen over the past 10-15 years, in keeping with thesimilar decline in NHS dental work.¹ We are not qualified todo dental work and have to preface our treatment with adviceto this effect. The (empirical) experience of my patients isthat they cannot access a dental practitioner at short noticefor almost any problem. "Emergency" appointments are often availablesome weeks in advance, and the out of hours system seems tobe difficult to access (local experience), time limited, andtelephone based.

My overall impression is of a system that fails to acknowledgethat what a patient calls an urgent problem is an urgent problemfor the system. This seems to me to amount to systemic denial,and I wonder why it is that the government has allowed thissituation to arise. Imagine pain or infection at . . . [Full text of this article]

Hugh van’t Hoff, general practitioner

¹ May Lane Surgery, Dursley, Gloucestershire GL11 5AZ

clogs@doctors.org.uk

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