Practical advice to get your dental practice open again

The key messages from a video conversation with Stephen Hudson, Simon Thackeray and Koray Feran 

More insights and ideas about what you can do now to get ready for The Restart. Key messages from the conversation;

1. Pause before you start seeing patients again. You will have to do this for lots of practical reasons (Stephen has prepared a document to help you with short listing priorities) but remember that the same control and planning that worked with your team before and during lockdown, will be just as important when we come out of it. Keep the momentum that you built up with your team and patients by slowing things down. Make sure that you set aside time be human, despite the need to wear masks and increased amounts of PPE.
2. Slowing things down may challenge your business model and who gets what share of what. There are no easy answers here but the answers are more likely to come from understanding and openness rather than one party  trying to get one over the other. Conversations built around shared values tend to be more productive.
3. The current NHS contract will be under scrutiny again, in order to facilitate a sustainable return to work. The current model is based upon ‘quick dentistry’ which is great for the bean counters but less so for  patients. It’s difficult to see how this model will survive further scrutiny, that necessitates longer appointments, gaps between patients and extra PPE.
4. What will the narrative be in 6 months with patients?…Education, NHS dentistry only covers the very basics.
5. What will the narrative be in 6 months within the profession?….We didn’t lose sight of our values during or after CoVid19. We allowed our values to shape our behaviours and procedures, way before there was enough clarity provided to us by anybody else.
6. Share stuff. There are enough patients out there for everybody. We can help more of them if we play nicely together.

You can get a copy of the ‘tick list’ that Stephen prepared by downloading it here: THE RESTART CHECKLIST

Koray has kindly published his live patient patient ‘return to work’ letter;

https://www.lciad.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/LCIAD-Post-COVID-19-return-to-work-policy-010520.pdf