Dear patients,
We hope this letter finds you and your family in good health.
You may have heard that the dental practices can restart the provision of dental care from Monday 8th June 2020.

Our practice will therefore be opening on that day. However, we just wanted to be clear that this may not be business as usual. The treatments you are offered may be different to those you received before, depending on the staff and the personal protection equipment available. It will take some time before services return to what you previously experienced as normal. Please be patient.

We will need to prioritise patients in the following order and envisage that this will be for the first few months after reopening. We will regularly monitor and review this on a weekly basis.

• Patients in pain and or with swelling
• Other urgent dental problems, for example a broken tooth
• Patients who were under treatment before the closure of the clinic

Our community has been through a lot over the last few months, and all of us are looking forward to resuming our normal habits and routines. While many things have changed, one thing has remained the same: our commitment to your safety.

Infection control has always been a top priority for our practice, and you may have seen this during your visits to our surgery. Our infection control processes are made so that when you receive care, it’s both safe and comfortable. We want to tell you about the infection control procedures we follow in our practice to keep patients and staff safe. It is all designed to minimise the physical contacts and to reduce the risk of transmission of infections.

Our practice follows infection control guidelines made by the governing bodies. We are up-to-date on new guidance that has been issued. We do this to make sure that our infection control procedures are current and adhere to recommendations.

You may see some changes when it is time for your next appointment. We made these changes to help protect our patients and staff. These include a pre-screening telephone call, a one-way system though the practice and taking payments in advance over the phone or by our online payment system.

We will communicate with you by telephone prior to your appointment to ask some screening questions and to identify what your treatment needs are. To comply with the new regulations, patients will not be able to enter the practice upon arrival.

Instead you will need to wait outside the practice or in your car if you parked in the practice car park.

When the dentist is ready for you a member of the reception team will telephone you asking you to enter the practice through the main door at the reception. Upon entering the practice you will see a yellow floor “please stand here” marker, this is where your temperature will be taken by a member of the dental team.
If your temperature is 37.8 degrees or higher you will be asked to return home immediately and follow the government COVID-19 self-isolation guidance.

If your temperature is below 37.8 degrees you will be asked to use the contactless hand sanitiser and clean your hand. Reception will process any payment as appropriate if you have not already paid for your appointment in advance during the pre-screening telephone call. You will not be able to go back to the reception after you have seen the dentist or the hygienist.

All patients will be requested to put on shoe covers and wash their hands and directed to the nearest hand washing facility. You will also be given an anti-viral mouth rinse to use while you are there.

A member of the dental team will provide you with a disposable apron for you to wear and you will then be taken into the surgery where you will be greeted by your dentist and dental nurse who will be donned in their personal protective equipment. You will not be able to sit down in the waiting room. Please note that there will be minimal conversation. The team members are using very tight fitting special respirators or masks which make it very difficult to have a normal conversation.

Upon completion of your appointment, you will be requested to remove your personal protective equipment and place it in a clinical waste bag for appropriate disposal and to use a hand sanitiser again. Patients will be directed to the main reception to leave the practice. All payments should have preferably been made prior to your visit by using our online payment facility or by card payment over the phone. Any future appointments will need to be made by calling the practice number at a later stage.

We will do our best to allow greater time between patients to reduce outside waiting times for you.

How you can help:

• With the exception of children and patients with carers, patients must come alone and unaccompanied
• A distance of at least 2 metres must be observed
• Payment should be made in advance by card where possible
• Not trying to shake staff members hands
• If you show symptoms following appointment booking, you should contact the practice by phone
• Please do not arrive early to the practice. As we are not able to give entry into the practice until your clinician is ready to see you.
• Please do not attend the practice to arrange an appointment. Please call the practice on 0207 229 9102 or by emailing info@nottinghilldentalclinic.com

We look forward to welcoming all our patients back into the practice. We apologise for any inconvenience our new routines may cause you. They are in place for keeping us all safe and to comply with national guidelines. We hope to be able to revert back to usual practice routines hopefully in a not too distant future.

Stay safe and well.

Kind regards,