We are doing everything we can to get up to date with all our patients’ care and will keep doing it until we have! Your safety is our primary concern.
There will be some changes as you would expect when you visit us to meet the recommended guidelines and some of these will be:
- Contact before your appointment to confirm details including any exposure to coronavirus, or symptoms of it, such as a new continuous cough, fever/high temperature, new loss of , or change in, sense of smell or taste, (anosmia)
- Please come to your appointment alone if possible and come to the door a minute before your time.
- The reception team will re-confirm the necessary information, take your temperature and after hand sanitising, show you to the surgery.
- Your dentist/hygienist and nurse will already be wearing their PPE and will look after you as usual. Just a bit more difficult to see their smiles!
- After your appointment, the dentist or hygienist will remove their PPE and take you to sort things out at reception, ideally contactless payment and it would be helpful if you have a pen to sign medical forms with.
If you are one of the people who have had dental problems during lock-down, we will be assessing and treating you as a priority. The first visit you have will allow us to stabilise the problem and if possible, provide a solution. Often the treatment will need to be staged, with the stabilisation phase allowing time for treatment protocols to return to normal. For example, we are trying to minimise any procedures that produce an aerosol as the current guidance recommends avoiding this. As the risk level decreases, we will be able to do more ‘normal’ dentistry and definitive treatments where these have not been possible before.
At the same time we will be catching up with our routine examinations and hygiene visits. We cannot at this stage use ultrasonic instruments so all hygiene will be done using hand instruments and modified techniques for polishing to avoid creating splatter/aerosol.
This will take us some weeks/months but we have a comprehensive record of who needs to be seen and when, so no-one will miss out.
Thanks again for your help in getting back to a more normal routine.
The Clover House Team
