AIBU to complain after NHS dentist did filling for my 16 year-old?

If you minded all these things, you shouldn’t gone with him!
you can get the filling changed for white if you want.
I think you’re being a bit OTT

😂👌

Why are you cross?

I'd there a reason you think he doesn't have capacity to give consent? Any extra needs?
He needed a filling, the dentist gave him one.
I don't think they made up a hole in his tooth, why would they? f you think it's really noticeable like you mentioned, take him to the dentist you said would do the white filling and swap it out.

If he's mature enough to attend medical appointments on his own, treatment comes with that sometimes.
If he goes too the GP alone, they might take bloods straight away etc.

I wouldn't have sent him alone. I had a rogue dentist at that age.

At any time your son can have his filling changed to white, though I think they last a shorter time.
Take him to a pivate check up every six months.

Count yourself lucky you have an NHS dentist. It’s not always the best service, but you already knew that when you were saving the money on the check up.
Great adult lesson for your son to learn at a young age.
He can book into having the filling changed for white, if he so wishes.

Please cut the apron strings and let your baby boy become a man.

Don’t complain. You’re saving a fortune.

No one should feel pressured into consenting to medical treatment, especially not treatment that isn't urgent. So yes, I think a complaint is called for, ideally directly from your son with you backing it up.

I would also spend some time with DS to role play how to say "No" to people in authority.

I don't know if this is helpful as I don't think you can act on it and a couple of the dentists I mention were in the US, but I have significant suspicions about dentists' trustworthiness. I had a butcher of a dentist when I was a kid, fillings every year, he ended up in jail for defrauding the NHS for doing unnecessary procedures on patients. I stopped going for years but eventually worked up the courage to go again. Needed a filling the first time but no more after that. Then I moved and got a new dentist. Needed a filling on the first visit, which seemed a coincidence but I tried to put it out of my mind as 10 years since the last one. No more fillings needed. Then I moved again a few years later and got another dentist and he found I needed two fillings. So I declined and got a second opinion. That dentist thought I needed one filling, but not in the either of the teeth the previous dentist had stated.

I haven't been back. That was 17 years ago and I haven't had any problems with any of the three teeth those dentists wanted to fill.

Given his track record, I’m genuinely dubious he even needed it done urgently

But it doesn’t sound like the dentist said he needed it done urgently, just that there was time to do it so might as well.

I think you’re being a bit dramatic about needing time to process and being completely unprepared. I had my first filling a couple of months ago - yes I’m an adult but still, it was my first one. It’s not something that needs processing.

I agree that the dentist should have explained the options for the type of filling.

It’s a filling which presumably a trained dentist thought he needed. Your reaction will not help your son to be resilient.

I was actually commenting on the part of the post which said that the NHS dentist would have to pay the invoice for getting the filling replaced. That is a daft assertion.

Not RTFT and the OP hasn't returned, but if I were the dentist and you complained, I'd boot you off my list but keep your son.

I'm 46, and have had exactly one filling. It's not a big deal at all and you sound hysterical. If he had to wait longer to get his filling it could have gotten worse and he could have developed an abscess.

The chat gpt bit at the end kills me😂😂😂

You are being ridiculous! I was going to the dentist alone long before the age of 16 (I was working at 16) and if something needed to be done it was done. My parents most certainly were nowhere in sight when I had my first injection in my mouth and I don't recall it being terrifying. If you were so worried then maybe you should have stayed with him, but really a trip alone to the dentist and getting a filling at 16 is not newsworthy.

A clinician can and did assess him as Gillick competent to consent to treatment. How do you think young women go on contraception or make pregnancy choices without parental consent?

You might be right. I’m not a great fan of amalgam, so I was focusing on that!

I hope when he came home you didn’t fly off the handle and make it about all about you and your complaint. Have you forgotten what it was like in the past? My school had a dental van that took us to a clinic and if we needed a filling, they just did it. I don’t remember my parents making a fuss about the dentist making a medical decision based on their professional opinion. If I needed a filling, the dentist did it. I don’t even think I had anaesthetic every time. Somehow me and millions of others are ok.

No one is looking in the back of you son’s mouth to see what type of filling he has. Do you tend to gaze that far back to the molars when someone is talking or laughing?

Yup, I agree with this. Some unscrupulous dentists do over-treat, as a way to earn fees. I'd be furious if my DDs had fillings done in such a rushed manner. None of us have fillings and I wouldn't expect to suddenly need them.

The normalisation of fillings in this thread is pretty surprising. I know that some children have issues with the enamel not forming properly on their teeth, and need extensive treatment. But for most children, this is avoidable and shouldn't be normalised.

I’d be a bit pissed that the filling wasn’t white. That said, you probably should have told him not to consent to any procedure without you.

I don’t think you can really complain about much. Your ds is old enough to be considered able to consent. I think the only thing would be that probably they didn’t explain to him that the filling would be visible, but some people prefer to pay for basically invisible white ones. Even so, that might be considered common knowledge.

Interesting point of view. I never thought about the financial aspect of this. Quite immoral actually if they pressured him and it was profitable as a result. I wonder if X-rays were taken? That the OP could request to see. I think many of the posters just want to argue because OP wrote it angrily and they’re not thinking about the morality and how none of us really want our children even at that age to experience unnecessary trauma / pain. I know so many adults that hate needles so it seems unlikely to me that all these posters just handle needles in the gum so pedestrianly.

Crappy cut and paste job from AI.

They didn’t do anything wrong. Re dubious need - nhs dental contracts are so poorly paid it would be very unlikely the dentist would make up that he needed a filling that he didn’t

YANBU

Oh how convenient for them that they just happened to have a slot to fill available right after a child has a check-up with a history of perfect teeth, so they can very conveniently give them an unnecessary procedure, not giving him anytime to think it through, and have the tax payers foot the bill.

I would be frankly LIVID, and I'd want proof that it was even necessary in the first place. I wouldn't believe that it was.

The people who think you are being ridiculous clearly have such crap teeth that a filling means nothing to them. They also don't seem to care about the dangers of these things to their health! My DH & I have never had a filling in our lives and I'd be gutted if our children ever needed any.

Oh I see. Although I think they were commenting on the suggestion to send the NHS an invoice for the replacement. Maybe I read that wrong