Dentist here, but Scotland based, snd very sad to read these comments.
I am full time, mixed NhS/Private. For context, I earned approx £50k six years ago. Since then, i bought a share in practice. My earnings technically doubled, but i now have a business loan almost twice what my mortgage is. So earning approx the same as before.
In real terms those earnings have reduced with time, due to increase in costs such as lab bills/dental materials, and minimal below inflation pay rises.
In March 2020 we went into lockdown. The practices across the country ground to a complete halt for four months only gradually opening up by end of July.
My business loan and mortgage had to be put on hold for six months as no income.
We opened With a lot of restrictions. We went from seeing 40 patients a day to see maybe 5 or 10, max couldn't actually use a drill at first, until public health found a solution.
The solution was expensive PPE ( that costs more than the remuneration for an nhs filling), a fallow time after procedure, which means you can't enter the room until the droplets settle. Initially this was for a full half hour, but now ranges in time between 10 to 30 minutes.
We couldn't take full advantage of furlough, and our replacement NHS emergency package was very poor, penalising staff that went on maternity leave amongst others.
We invested in red band handpieces and ventilation and slowly started getting back on our feet.
Everything takes twice as long and is twice as expensive. We literally stick our faces in people's unmasked open mouths. We expose ourselves to the virus every day. We are constantly off with Covid, or our nurses are, or we are isolating. We are stressed, broken and have had enough.
In Scotland there were no new graduates this past year resulting in a chronic recruitment crisis, as staff retire or leave the profession, and there are no replacements.
After being closed for so long, and still so restricted in what we can do, we are still fire fighting. We are still trying to get back on our feet. We are being threatened by the government that we need to increase our targets, which is unrealistic. We have backlogs of about 18 months. I have a waiting list of maybe 800 potential patients wanting to register as NHS.
My hygienist is terrified of Covid and doesn't want to work anymore.
We can only do so much
To the poster who said -
"Most dentists won’t get out of bed for less than £200k a year unfortunately these days.
This is where we’ve got to"
🖕this is absolute rubbish!!!! Maybe the occasional place that offer fancy services such as implants ( where dentists have trained for many further years at additional expense and are extreme specialist experts) this might occasionally be the case, but your average high street dentist has completely HAD ENOUGH.
Don't blame us. Contact your MPs. The system has been broken already for many years, and Covid has simply highlighted many of the issues that already have been simmering.