Fort dental practice is transformed into lockdown emergency hub

An experienced dental team in Fort William has described seeing its bustling practice transformed into an emergency hub for treating the most distressed patients during the coronavirus lockdown.

Staff at the town’s M&S Dental normally work with up to 100 NHS and private patients a day, providing everything from simple check-ups to complex dentistry and cosmetic treatments.

But for the duration of lockdown, the bustling local practice, which serves around 15,000 people across Lochaber, has been turned into one of Scotland’s emergency NHS treatment centres, providing advice and treatment to patients with chronic problems.

The practice is part of Clyde Munro, the biggest, independent dental group in Scotland. Gregor Muir, who founded the practice in 1998 told the Lochaber Times at times the current situation has felt surreal.

‘While it has been challenging,

Staff at Clyde Munro’s M&S Dental Care in Fort William have been treating the most distressed patients across Lochaber, while maintaining strict social distancing; and right, dentist Gregor Muir who initially founded the practice.

particularly at the beginning, once we got familiar with the new routines and processes we all got into our stride and got on with the job,’ he explained.

‘Ultimately it is still dentistry and providing the patient care and relief that we all came into this profession for.

‘I really want to pay tribute to the professionalism of every member of staff who has volunteered to be part of this, including a number of dentists from the NHS public dental service. They have all bonded brilliantly and pulled out all of the stops.

‘It’s also important to recognise the fortitude, grace under pressure and good humour of the patients. Most of those we have seen during lockdown have been in a great deal of pain, sometimes for weeks, and were often badly sleep deprived as a result.

‘Yet they have never taken out their pain or frustration on members of the dental team. In fact, they have been respectful of the restrictions we’re operating under and grateful that they were finally having their problems addressed.’

During lockdown radical changes at the practice, in the town’s Glen Nevis Place, has meant the introduction of a two-tiered treatment system – with a red stream for patients with potential COVID-19 symptoms and a green stream for those without any symptoms.

In both cases, patients are only seen by staff wearing extensive protective equipment, with elaborate procedures in place for donning and removing the PPE and for moving patients through the treatment process. Despite lockdown, the practice has still received many calls from patients about possible routine appointments. Reception staff field up to 25 calls a day, giving out advice where possible, while passing on the most severe cases to clinical colleagues, who then triage the serious cases, prescribing pain killers or antibiotics where possible.

A small number of patients with facial swelling, extreme pain or other severe symptoms were referred to the next stage, which involved being vetted for possible COVID-19 symptoms before being sent to the surgery for treatment – on average five patients a day.

Strict government restrictions on permissible treatments mean dentists have been able to do little more than extract teeth, remove nerves from certain teeth or drain abscesses affecting visible, front teeth.

Gregor, who graduated in dentistry from Glasgow University in 1994, added: ‘Certainly it’s been frustrating that treatment options have been so limited. But as the lockdown eases, we will start to see more and more treatments opening up again.’

Jillian Bruce has been the practice manager for 21 years and oversees a 31-strong team including nine dentists and 15 dental nurses, who also work in the sister practice in Glencoe. While both practices have been shut down and staff furloughed, she said almost the entire team had volunteered to be part of the NHS emergency hub.

She added: ‘I could never have predicted a situation like this but everyone has just got on with it and done their utmost to give patients the best possible care. We’ve all heard the horror stories about people removing their own teeth, but thankfully we haven’t seen anything like that.

‘The upside is that once the lockdown lifts our team will be among the best-prepared and best-versed in Scotland on how to work efficiently to prevent the spread of this virus. That will be extremely reassuring to our patients.’