As a matter of update, we have now received some guidance from the chief dental officer for Scotland about the routemap to re-opening dental practices.
The UDCC’S (urgent dental care hubs) have been set up throughout Scotland to deal with dental emergencies during the lockdown. Chalmers dental center is seeing COVID asymptomatic patients and Bonnyrigg center is allocated for COVID symptomatic patients especially in the Lothian area covering Edinburgh, Midlothian, West Lothian and East Lothian. The UDCC’S have now increased their capacity and extended their services across Duncan street clinic with 3 surgeries operating and UDCC’ will also be opening soon in Sighthill, Musselburgh, and Howden. The chief dental officer for Scotland in his communication to all the dental practices had mentioned:
“It was initially necessary to restrict the range of treatments available in urgent dental care centres and we are now able to expand the scope of this service to deal with a wider range of acute and urgent dental problems. Further information can be found here:”
During phase 1 post lockdown the goal is to expand the range of treatments available in the urgent care hubs. This is obviously a step in the right direction for anyone in desperate need of dental treatment at the moment. We at SR Dental care are part of a buddy scheme as per the recommendation of Lothian health board doing a shared oncall rota with 2 other buddy dental practices in Dalkeith, Midlothian and a dentist is available for advise over the phone and for issuing prescriptions during our opening hours.We are still your first point of contact for any dental treatment needs.
Phase 2 will see dental practices open up 1 surgery only, for urgent care only; Phase 2 will happen in 2 steps as phase 2a for urgent dental care and phase 2b for non-urgent dental care which will include routine exams but still no aerosol-generating procedures like fillings or ultrasonic scalings, etc. The plan is for this to be in effect by the end of July with practices opening up for phase 2a in another couple of weeks but we are still waiting for more clarity about the dates and will keep posted once we got more information.
The timeline obviously depends on the control of the virus but moving on to phase 3 sees us offer a broader range of treatments and obviously phase 4 is when we’re back to ‘normal.’
It’s at least good to have an idea now of the path ahead, as over the past couple of weeks we were all wondering what the plans were. We are waiting for more details soon and will keep everyone updated, as we are as desperate as you are to get back to work and seeing our patients at SR Dentalcare in Dalkeith, Midlothian.
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