To think this is taking up valuable appointments?

[Fairysteps11]

NHS emergency dentist.

Backstory, I did have a dentist pre covid. Notice on website stated that it was emergencies only and not to contact for regular check ups. So I didn't contact them to find that I had been de registered for not contacting them...

Anyway. Last week, my filling came out. After a very short time, my tooth was agonising. Couldn't sleep, was on regular painkillers. Phoned the NHS emergency dentist and had an appointment, great. I chose to have the tooth extracted as getting another dentist, including private is impossible in my area and the waiting list for root canal is 6-9 months. The infection in my tooth wasn't allowing the anaesthetic to work and after 11 injections, I had to stop as it was so painful. We then changed tack and drilled and filled the tooth. Dentist squirted some antibiotics onto the nerve before filling and said should I still have pain in a few days to call back and they'll prescribe antibiotics.

Phoned back yesterday and they can't prescribe although it is on my notes that it is highly likely I will need antibiotics but I need to request a triage dentist to call back through the emergency line to have them prescribed. So I called that line. They said no appointments and to call again in the morning. I asked for a over the phone appointment just to have the antibiotics prescribed. No we can't do that either.

Bearing in mind that one side of my face is now swollen and I've been taking a cocktail of painkillers for a week. I phoned the emergency line this morning as requested and I need another face to face appointment!

Am I being unreasonable to think that I am and have wasted dentist time and using an appointment that someone else could have had to get a prescription that I was told I would probably need!

I'm going to attend the appointment due to the swelling and that more of my face is becoming more swollen and painful by the day but for something so simple, I have been on the phone to three people, roughly 10 mins each and now another face to face appointment.

If dentists are in such short supply, why is time being wasted by small things like this?

Because a dentist has to have viewed you before prescribing antibiotics. Our registration is at risk if we don’t. Doesn’t matter that you were seen recently

It's not against dentists, there are guidelines that need to be followed. I just can't see how this is beneficial to anybody. I'd have hoped that dentists would have the same rights over prescriptions that doctors do. Especially as the dentist noted that I would more than likely need antibiotics. I find the situation time wasting for everyone involved as my tooth is fine, just the infection to be sorted which was known as a high possiblity.
I can't help thinking that the need for antibiotics with just me only has already taken up two phonecalls (20 mins) and an hour for the dentist last week, now another 30 mins of phonecalls and another appointment which will then total another hour at least when if they were allowed to, in a professional career would reduce the time taken to sort the issue.

The problem is , in dentistry, antibiotics rarely cure anything, they just kick the problem down the line.

If your face is swollen first line is to either extract the tooth or open it up to drain the pus. Ultimately the tooth needs to come out or root treated .

Not in your case but unfortunately because of fear (of treatment or cost ) etc many people just want antibiotics for the dental problems which is just not appropriate.

Antibiotic resistance is a coming holocaust which will have drastic implications for us all so dentists as well as all health workers have to be very,very wary of prescribing antibiotics.

In emergency clinics where there is no regular dentist it is even more inappropriate to have remote prescribing without seeing the patient in person.

Holocaust doesn’t just mean some general big disaster, ffs.

Completly agree with you, should have been prescribed antibiotics, if only yo get on top of the infection so the anaesthetic could work and you could have the tooth removed.
Our local nhs dentist is fantastic, and she admits there is so much red tape especially in dental care. My daughter needed to be seen by a specialist, our dentist knew this, but had to refer to dentist 2, who then referred us to dentist 3, who could then refer her to the specialist that our dentist knew she needed all along. Appts 2 and 3 could have been given to someone else and our dentist refer straight to dentist 4 (specialist)

If my face was swollen and I was in considerable pain, I would want to be seen, not just prescribed over the phone. I think it's in your own interest and not a waste of an appointment.

This happened to us as a family too, exactly the same, don't call us due to Covid, no notification we had been reregged until I called.

Tried to say that we followed their guidance they didn't care.

Personally, I believe the amount of people this was done to was deliberate because most of those who I've heard this happening to were with a dentist that was very pushy on asking patients to go private and were far more interested in private patients. At our dentist if you called you could only gain an emergency appointment on Wednesday morning if you were NHS or denplan patients. I even had appointments booked months before cancelled because "a private patient has priority and requested this appointment"

It's yet another denial of care allowed by the NHS hating Tory party. Same as you can't get your ears syringed you have to pay in Boots or similar, same as physio which is diabolical now.

Even my GP now is trying to push private health at us or using an online GP which costs.

It's interesting that your waiting time for root canal treatment is 6-9 months. I visited the dentist last week and was told I needed the same treatment and the waiting time on the NHS in our area is 3 years!

You are right it doesn’t , its dictionary definition means mass destruction or death on a large scale. People dying of diseases ,of tiny accidents (like a prick from a rose) , from routine and emergency surgery , from infection from bacteria much more virulent .Much of the advances of modern medicine and surgery are predicated on effective antibiotics .

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/322131088_PANRESISTANT_SUPERBUGS_ARE_WE_AT_THE_EDGE_OF_A_'MICROBIAL_HOLOCAUST'

I need the antibiotics before anything can be done to the tooth, so it's hard to know what to do! There is so much on the media about wasting the NHS precious time. There could be changes made so that if patients need an antibiotic prescription and the dentist has within a certain amount of time, warned patient that this is the case, it could have saved a lot of time and money.

I went to my appointment, the dentist didn't look at my tooth and I was prescribed antibiotics as it's on my notes. I didn't even sit down!

This is what I don't understand. Half of the appointments are unwarranted which is surely leading to longer wait lists and more money paid out by NHS needlessly!

I can't have any treatment until the infection has gone, so there's nothing that can be done until then, hence the antibiotics to get rid of the infection. I had a small amount of antibiotics put in the tooth before filling with the small hope it would clear. I just didn't realise I would be wasting so much NHS time by getting the prescription I was told I'd probably need!

Yes, I stuck to the rules and because I didn't need urgent dentistry during covid, I now don't have a dentist nor can get one for love nor money!

It really varies by area
My wait was a month with our nhs dentist, and that was with me saying please could I have a Wednesday or a Friday so don't need to take time off work. I think I must be very lucky!

What!!!!! Wow!!! That's nuts!!! I would go private if I could but there seems to be a shortage of private dentists starting, in this area anyway. I may have to consider travelling but with work, kids etc, it could be a struggle!

It's death by fire or mass slaughter. Not large scale death by disease or infection.

Actually ,especially but not exclusively fire or nuclear war. As you can see from link I posted it is commonly used in relationship to post antibiotic medicine , because of the massive increase in deaths not only from bacteria from which we will have no defence but also because much of modern surgery and medicine is utterly dependent on antibiotics that work and would become impossible without.
You only have to look at the virtual wiping out of many different peoples when exposed to infectious agents they had no defense against in the pre anti biotic era to see what we could be looking at .

They're using it wrongly too.

I'm not denying that antibiotic resistance will be catastrophic but words mean things. The fact that's it a medical journal is meaningless at this point given we've been seeing the kind of stupidity that has medical professionals and charities referring to adult human males as "women" in recent years.