08 Aug People resorting to DIY dentistry due to shortage of dentists
DENTISTS quitting the profession is partially to blame for a huge backlog of patients waiting for dental treatment, according to a leading practitioner.
Rhona Eskander told GB News: “It’s massively increased and particularly during the pandemic because there was such a backlog of patients that weren’t being seen.
“We were shut down for about three months, the first three months of the pandemic after the national lockdown, and because of that people were resorting to pulling out their own teeth.
“However, the problem continued because when dentists actually opened up what had happened was that people that were having regular checkups were no longer coming in for their regular checkups.
“And so diseases that were once reversible, such as decay became irreversible and tangent to things like root canals or extractions, which then led to people pulling out their own teeth.
“Because dentists are not seeing these patients already after the backlog, these diseases are getting worse.
“In fact, actually, there have been studies to show that about 2,000 dentists have also left the profession since the pandemic and in the last year.
“That really shows that this is not just a problem of backlog, but also there just simply isn’t enough dentists able to treat the diseases that are required.”
Speaking to Colin Brazier on GB News, she added: “They [patients] got out of the habit of going in, but I think ultimately as well, there’s definitely an element of desperation.
“I don’t know if you’ve ever had a toothache, but it’s one of the most excruciating pains and people just could not cope anymore and I think that this problem is going to stay around for a long time.
“You already read the statistics from the British Dental Association and the problem really is, as well as that so many dentists left the profession as mentioned, that isn’t enough staff as well.
“And a lot of practices are burdened with the NHS contracts at the moment, they’re putting immense amount of pressure for them to reach targets. Furthermore, the smaller practices that don’t have the resources are really struggling in comparison to the more corporate practices as well.
“So really, it’s become kind of this issue that’s encompassing lots of different things.”
Ms Eskander added: “A lot of people were leaving the profession because of the stress, because of Covid when they were coming back to work, what was happening was the restrictions that were imposed on dentists were extremely stressful.
“We had to deal with something called fallow time, which was airing out the surgery between patients which reduced the number of patients that you can see. We had to work in really heavy duty PPE much more than we ever have done before…
“A lot of dentists left the profession at that time. So we had a lot leaving for that reason, then you had a lot that were dealing with stress.
“With the stress levels, they felt that they just couldn’t cope with the amount of patients that needed to be seen. They had a lot of pressure with these contracts and so forth.”
