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encouragement from schools and teachers we have gained the
confidence of parents and children alike and, in any future schemes
such as the additional use of mobile dental clinics for which there
is a useful role, we must have due regard to, and provide full
scope for, this willing co-operation. However, being mainly tied
to the provision of Health Centres, our planning for immediate
future expansion in this Borough will be difficult and restricted.
A description of our present facilities will complete the review
and bring the position up to date.
Even with a patient/dentist ratio less favourable than that of
Scandinavia we would still require 40 surgeries if every school
child were to be treated by our dental service but, at present, for
our 40,000 school children, we have only 7 surgeries (an additional
one will be opened in 1971) of which 2 are in schools, 2 in one
clinic with the remaining 3 operating as single surgeries. Besides
the fact that some are remote and therefore relatively inaccessible,
it follows that all clinics have excessive numbers of schools and
potential patients in their catchment areas.
In contra-distinction to other community .health services the
professional dental staff is limited by extant surgeries—no reserve
dental surgeons are employed. Under such conditions, staff leave
and sickness produce serious situations out of all proportion to
the number involved. For a child familiar with one dental surgeon
the introduction of a locum is not ideal but, as this is rarely
possible, the usual end 'result is that all organised dental work in
a particular area, such as treatment of current and emergency
patients, school inspection (programmes and periodic recalls, is
brought almost to a standstill. By their very nature, single surgeries
are particularly susceptible to such disruption but though,
despite present day scarcity, locums can occasionally be retained,
their employment becomes possible only if the vacant periods are
known well in advance—consequences of sudden emergencies,
therefore, cannot be effectively countered. Patently the multisurgery
clinics can more easily cope with such a situation and the
introduction of these into future projects should warrant high
priority.
During the autumn of 1970 we were able to obtain the services
of an orthodonist and a dental auxiliary which not only added
greatly to the efficacy of our services but also exemplified the