The New Normal

It's been a few months now since we have been allowed back to work in the surgery.  We spent the first few weeks just seeing the emergency patients who had problems during lock down. It took several weeks to get hold of the appropriate PPE for more complicated work and now we are getting back to seeing our routine patients for examination and hygienist appointments and doing regular treatment. 

The differences are we are all wearing more PPE and all of the time and taking temperatures of our patients. We are asking everyone to use the alcohol hand gel when entering the practice and before leaving too. With any face to face appointments the dentist and nurse will have a surgical mask on, a face shield, a plastic apron and gloves as well as our fresh scrubs. We are still trying to limit the production of Aerosols (spray) so most of our hygienist appointments are only hand scaling (unless otherwise organised). If we are producing aerosols (for example drilling teeth for a filling or using the ultrasonic scaler) then we have to wear a full head covering, a full length surgical gown and a fit tested FFP3 mask as well as our gloves and shields. Unfortunately we also have to leave the surgery for a certain amount of time after producing the aerosols (fallow time) so we are having to be careful where we place appointments in our book. 

So as you can imagine we are rather busy at the practice at the moment trying to catch up on all the patients who we should have seen during lock down and those that need treatment.  We have hopefully contacted everyone who has had an appointment cancelled due to Covid 19 and are starting to send our recall e-mails and text messages too. Unfortunately due to trying to balance our appointment book so we aren't too busy and to deal with fallow time we are asking patients to call or email the practice to make appointments rather than use our online booking system like before. 

If we haven't spoken to you or if you haven't received an email or text message from the practice and are due for an appointment please don't hesitate to contact us on 01904781987 or email patients@poppletondentalpractice.co.uk 

Thank you so much for standing by us during the difficult times over the last six months.  We really appreciate how understanding all the patients have been with our situation and we are all trying hard to work towards a sensible but challenging new normal.