The dentistry crisis “lapping at the doors of primary care”

Over one week this spring, 20 patients presented at GP Abbie Brooks’ York surgery with abscesses, dental pain, and broken teeth—demanding antibiotics and painkillers. Brooks could not prescribe because she was not indemnified to perform dental work. Many of these patients, Brooks says, were not registered with a dentist or able to find an NHS dentist, and had already been told to call 111. The NHS medical helpline had advised patients to visit emergency NHS dentists 50 miles away from Brooks’ surgery.

“Vulnerable patients often can’t get to emergency dentist appointments in Bradford or Leeds for logistical or financial reasons,” she says, adding that a small proportion of patients became difficult when Brooks was unable to help. “One woman was really quite angry that I wouldn’t incise and drain her abscess,” she says. “It’s not acceptable for GPs to have to deal with this crisis not of our doing.”

This is not an isolated incident, and it is more acute in certain areas of the country. GPs are complaining of a “dentistry crisis lapping at the doors of primary care” as an unprecedented number of dentists hand back their NHS contracts. A May 2022 report commissioned by the Association of Dental Groups (ADG), which represents major chains of dental surgeries, found that England had its lowest number of NHS dentists in a decade; that 2000 dentists had left the profession in the year to May 2022; and that only a third of adults in England, and half of children, have access to an NHS dentist.1 The report highlighted “emerging dental deserts,” including north and east Lincolnshire, Norfolk, Staffordshire, and the East …