Dental Care

Dental services across England have reopened, however this does not mean that capacity is back to normal. We are currently working our way through a backlog of treatment that has accumulated during the course of the Coronavirus pandemic. 

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Our latest patient email update circulated on Friday 9th October 2020 outlines the current working arrangements at the practice, and reads as follows:

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Dear all, 

 

We sincerely hope that you and your families are keeping well. 

 

Firstly, we would like to take this opportunity to thank you all for your patience during this difficult time. Due to an increasing number of enquiries, it is clearly time for an update as to what is happening with the services that we are able to offer at the practice. We realise that for most of our patients, it is likely to have been some time since your last visit. Although we are in the midst of very uncertain and challenging times, please be reassured we are doing everything we can to try to resume our services as best as we can, in the safest way for all. 

 

Our plan over the coming months is to continue to prioritise our patients who are having dental emergencies. We are also now in a position to make arrangements to see those patients who were mid-way through treatment at the point of lockdown. Once we have completed these treatment courses, we will then be heading into our next phase by restarting routine dental care, including examinations, with an emphasis initially on those with the highest risks.  

 

This process of restarting the practice is a huge logistical task. We have been able to increase our sessions recently to accommodate this, but we would ask that our patients consider that it is incredibly difficult to serve over 12,000 patients, whilst adhering to the strict infection procedures imposed on us as a profession. These protocols are severely hampering the provision of our routine processes, for example after every aerosol-generating procedure, we still are required to leave the surgery to settle as part of a 1-hour “fallow time” before a full surgery clean-down. All these strict infection control processes are in place to protect all of us, but they do mean that our capacity on a daily basis is significantly reduced. 

 

We have now opened up 2 more of our surgeries and increased our staffing levels accordingly. As you can imagine, however, we are still facing many difficulties in resuming anything resembling normality with these procedures in place. Normality may still take some time to reach. 

 

We would like to reassure you that all these measures are taken to ensure the absolute safety of both patients and our team. 

 

We would like to take this opportunity to thank you again for your patience. 

 

We look forward to seeing you soon 

 

Yours sincerely 

 

LWT Dental Care

 

For our patients who come into difficulties, during this time, we are operating an initial telephone triage service. The practice landline (0114 266 2853) is answered during normal working hours, and triaged appropriately. If necessary, a member of the clinical team will contact you as soon as possible, and discuss any problems over the phone. Should it be necessary, we have an ability to prescribe medication remotely (collected locally at the Sheffield Late Night Pharmacy in Broomhill), but for those requiring urgent face-to-face care we continue to prioritise emergency care. 

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We understand that this could prove to be a difficult time for our patients, especially those that experience problems during the pandemic. The British Dental Association has produced some helpful advice for patients, which may be found here.

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Below, please find a list of common dental problems and some helpful advice to try:​