To think that dentists should be on NHS?

[foureleven]

In agony, tooth is infected (it even smells which is embarrassing) it has to come out but they want to charge £55 to look at it and a further £150 to take it out. I dont have that money!

What area are you in? Availability of NHS dentists varies wildly I find. My brother is one in Liverpool if that's near you.

There is a dental hospital (the teaching hospital attached to the university) in Liverpool too, and although they don't advertise it, they will see emergencies if you walk in off the street in sheer desperation. If there is a DENTAL hospital (not A&E of a normal hospital) near you, then go go go - just show up. You might be seen by a student, but they will be more than adequately supervised by very experienced teaching staff. And they usually treat for free I think, though not always.

I'm greater london. Just to update Ive called NHS direct and theyve got me an emergency appointment this afternoon.. praise be! Thanks MN!

I would have either been in great pain or had hungry kids this month if I hadnt had that advice!

Its hurting like buggery at the moment but only a couple of hours until I can ake some progress..

I can't find an NHS dentist round me for love nor money. DH had some work done 6 months ago and it cost us nearly £500...double ouch. Especially annoying at the moment as I am pregnant so would get free treatment if anything needed doing...but I can't find anyone to see me!

I'm lucky enough to have managed to remain on my dentist's NHS list since I've had teeth. I even kept it up from living abroad - I made sure I went to see him for check-ups everytime I came home for visits. Costs me £20-odd quid for a filling and £15 for a check-up (which I then don't pay for if I have to have a filling!)

I'm incredibly grateful for this, but slightly pissed off that I need to be grateful. Dental health is really important to general health and I think that dentisits (like GPs) should be contracted to the NHS for a certain proportion of their patients. My DH, who didn't grow up here, can't get into an NHS practice and has just shelled out more than £1000 for essential dental work. Luckily we had some savings he could use.

It's been the same situation for a while now. We had to go on a waiting list for nearly a year before we could join our dentists and it's 20 miles away. It was the nearest one we could get that was taking NHS patients. Before that I had an infection in my tooth and needed a root canal and had to go to an emergency dentist that was even further away. Once you get registered with one, you need to do your utmost to stay with them because it's a nightmare trying to find another.

Oenopod, living abroad and continuing to use NHS dental services will mean that someone who lives in the area was not able to register with that NHS dentist because you were on their list

I do hope you continued to pay UK taxes to pay for that NHS service while you were abroad.

Oenopod - YABVU to keep up an NHS dentist waiting list while overseas

OP - in case you haven't already been linked

www.nhs.uk/servicedirectories/pages/servicesearch.aspx

if there isn't an NHS dentist with available spaces, then there should at least be an emergency service which you'll qualify for. In the meantime, get yerself on a waiting list

(worth looking btw - new NHS places are opening all the time, but then I do live in CameronLand, so I may be spoiled )

MrsC2010 - I had exactly the same problem, was very frustrating.

Has anybody emailed their MP to complain about the lack of NHS dentists in their area? It's worth doing...

There are oodles (ie 20 within a mile) of NHS dentists taking on new patients in south London.
Half my friends around the country visit the dentist when they visit me.

Which is great for me but if anyone has ideas on how to get dentists and every other type of business to shove off out of London to the rest of the country, please let your MP or someone know!

There are plenty of NHS dentists in the north west too notcitrus!

We just moved house and I have registered us all with an NHS dentist no problem!

They offered me a "check-up" appointment within a week so I'm sure they would be very quick in an emergency.

I think its a lot better than it used to be.

I feel your pain foureleven. Literally. I really need a filling and as we've only just moved to the area I've been looking around for an NHS dentist. No chance. I'm going to have to spend at least a ton to get it filled, and as dd is only four months old I should be getting it totally free. Hurrrump!

To those who criticised me for maintaining my NHS dentist place whilst abroad. For a start i wouldn't be able to do it unless I was able to maintain regular check ups. I also remained registered with my GP - anyone see a problem with that? My permanent address was still in the area and i fulfilled the terms of the NHS contract.

But mainly because I was still resident in the UK. I was on long-term alien, non-resident visas or on temporary residency visas. I paid tax in those countries (with none of the attendant benefits of residents) in accordance with the reciprocal arrangements the UK government has with those countries. And if you get into the whole 'you can only access services if you pay taxes' game then you open a whole other can of worms.

And I wasn't taking away that NHS place from another person - my dentist admitted that he didn't take any new NHS he just maintained the existing ones he had. When they dropped away he didn't replace them.

I can see why people might get shirty about it, but I won't apologise for it.

HeadFairy - just saw on your profile you're in Surrey. Have you moved here? If so there are a couple of NHS dentists in Guildford/Godalalming if that's any use to you? Can give you names if you like...

Working for an NHS dentist, I am pretty sure you are not entitled to NHS treatment if you are not resident in UK.

Maybe I am wrong though - not criticising you, just curious, Oenopod..does your dentist know you don't live in UK?

My CM had similar prob recently & they wouldn't remove the tooth while there was an infection.
She needed course of Anti-B's to get rid of infection before tooth could be dealt with.

Well done for finding somewhere & good luck with the tooth.

I do live here now, so it is historical. And I was never non-resident in the UK. I was completely open with the dentist and his admin staff, and they were happy to keep me on. It was because I was never a resident elsewhere - always on temporary working visas (that were usually tied into the job/contract I was doing).

You have to be resident somewhere! And the UK was my resident country. I would have been eligible for NO benefits or welfare in the other countries despite paying full tax there, this is because the UK government has reciprocal agreements with various other governments. Ergo, i was still entitled to the benefits of being a British Citizen and resident.

It would be like saying that a gap year student doing 18 months working holiday around Australia was no longer entitled to being registered with his/her family GP and dental practice.

I'm not upset by the comments - I know I'm in the right and have had it confirmed by the NHS dentist, so I don't feel bad in anyway. And because I have regular check-ups I don't then become a drain on the NHS later, with rotten teeth and having to go to A&E!

Prevention is always better than cure.

FWIW i think it is terrible that people in some areas can't get NHS treatment - that is the dentists and the government's fault - not mine!

I could be really wrong ..

I thought if you were exempt from charges eg pregnant, under 16 over 65 etc etc then dentists were still obligated to take you on

I thought it was just people like me who would like to be nhs but dont need to be iyswim that they could turn down

How are dentists funded through University ?
Am I right in thinking they pay their own tuition fee's from years 1 to 3 and then if they choose to take a bursary from year 4 and 5 they then commit to a certain number of years of NHS practice ?
That's where the problem lies if I've understood it correctly, why on earth would you agree to lesser paid NHS work if the NHS won't train you, it's not comparable to GP's at all.

Oenopod - that is interesting, I really wasn't criticising, I wanted to know, in case the question came up here at work. Thanks.

I also think that dentists have a lot of discretion when it comes to things like this. And with regard to charges.

My DH had work that cost over £1000 at his dentist. My dentist would have charged even his private patients about half that.

There are good dentists who don't see patients as cash cows, and dentists who go out of their way to help people within the constraints of the current (inefficient) system.

Then there are money-grubbing dentists who see it purely as a business, rather than the human's behind the wallets!

Guys, an update. I have antibiotics.. and Im feeling better already! Have gone on waiting list for tooth out.. probably wait 10 years but hey ho!

I think it was St Guys I went to!

There will be an emergency nhs dentist in your area, ours is in the health centre where they do baby weighing etc

My brother is an NHS dentist, as I mentioned earlier. It is very very hard to make any money as an NHS dentist and at the same time do a good job. To quote my brother, 'to make any money out of the NHS dentistry system, you have to do a crap job AND be rude, and I'm not prepared to do either'. The times allowed for treatment are exceptionally brief and the payments that they can claim are small. There are also lots of treatments that the NHS just won't fund, including restorative work or anything deemed 'cosmetic'. I have private dental insurance and wouldn't have NHS treatment just because it isn't the same. I do think proper treatment should be available to everyone but it would require radical overhaul of the system. Why would you offer NHS treatment when you can go private and make much more money? My brother does it because he went into dentistry with idealistic ideas about helping people and it is this ethos that has him responding to all out of hours calls including getting called out SIX TIMES on Christmas day to go to the surgery and treat patients who said invariably, 'well it's been hurting for weeks now but just today it got unbearable....', but I can totally understand why people go private and don't take NHS patients. The whole system is crap and nobody knows how to fix it.