How to box clever with your time

What do you understand by the rules of dentistry? Have you ever read the General Dental Council's (GDC) regulations? Do the rules even match our core beliefs? When it comes to NHS dentistry, do you understand what you are meant to do for your patients? In effect, the crux of NHS dentistry should be focused on prevention. Do we sometimes spend time doing things that we should not, i.e. restorative work on patients who have not proved that they brush their teeth? Has your practice figured out how to do prevention within an NHS system?

As a team member, understanding the role of the NHS is a ‘need not want’, and is critical to dental health care. When communicating with patients, dental nurses have a key role to play in this. In fact, they are more important than dentists. Does your dentist understand that their team can do most of the prevention work? And yes, dental nurses can perform the UDAs, before freeing the dentist’s time to concentrate on more challenging clinical work. When listening to young dentists, I find common concerns are: