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102
Report by the Authority's Senior Dental Officer, 1948.
General.
The outstanding difficulty of the year under review has been
the continued inability to secure full-time dental officers to complete
the Authority's authorised establishment of six full-time dentists,
and it has been necessary to accept whatever assistance has been
forthcoming from part-time private practitioners. By this means
there has been for part of the year a maximum equivalent of
23/11ths dental officers working in the area. In September,
however, one of these private practitioners found it necessary to
reduce his sessions of work by two per week and this, together with
the fact that private practitioners will not attend on Saturday
mornings and on various odd sessions according to their own
private arrangements, has lowered the average attendance to an
equivalent of two full-time dental officers to do all the work necessary
for 12,000 school children, expectant and nursing mothers, and
pre-school children in addition.
During 1948 the war damage repairs were completed
at Park House Health Centre and two dental surgeries were
re-opened there on 23rd March. It has not been found possible to
staff one of these surgeries more than 4/llths of its time.
From 6th May until 25th June, 1948 the dental services provided
from Leyton Green Health Centre were carried on at Knotts
Green Open Air School, due to war damage repairs at the Health
Centre.
It is, as yet, somewhat early to assess the effect of the private
practitioners' services being available to our patients under the
general dental service established since July, 1948 ; but a general
survey leads one to the belief that it has not had much effect since
some children are brought to the Health Centres whose mothers
say they have endeavoured to obtain treatment privately but have
been referred to the Health Centre or offered an appointment
three weeks ahead. Where treatment has been carried out for
some of these children by a private practitioner it usually appears
to have been the extraction of an aching tooth.
The fact that school children may be treated by a private
practitioner does not, in some ways, appear to be a good thing, as
in the past persuasion was always used to get the conservative or
filling work done, and in many cases it was completed before the
extractions were commenced ; whereas in the private practitioner
service persuasion to attend for multiple fillings does not appear
to be the custom.