The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
Emergency procedures limited to approved clinics
The places where you can get emergency dental work done will be more limited in Nova Scotia as of today.
The Provincial Dental Board of Nova Scotia, which regulates the profession, introduced a new protocol Tuesday that will restrict those procedures to particular locations because of the COVID-19 outbreak.
As a result, dentists who want to provide emergency services must apply to the dental board for approval.
As of Wednesday, only three dental emergency clinics were listed on the board's site, all in Halifax: the Dalhousie faculty of dentistry, the oral and maxillofacial surgery clinic at the Victoria General Hospital and the department of pediatric dentistry at the IWK Health Centre.
In an FAQ page on its site, the board advises people in dental emergencies to phone their dentist. "Make sure you leave your name, contact number, and nature of your dental concern on their voice mail and your dentist will call you back."
Dentists will triage and assess all patient inquiries on emergencies by phone. (If you do not have a regular dentist, go to http://pdbns.ca/find-adentist.)
As for patients who have COVID-19 and need emergency dental work, "the dentist will make an initial assessment and make arrangements to have your emergency dental issue treated."
On March 21, Nova Scotia public health ordered dentists not to practise in their offices unless it was an emergency. The dental board's new protocol comes after public health announced this week that the first "community spread" of the COVID-19 respiratory virus had been identified. Previous cases had been linked to travel outside the province.
Dentists who get approval for emergency procedures must follow detailed guidelines to limit possible COVID-19 exposure, which are set out on the dental board's website. For example, there should only be one patient in the treatment facility at any one time.
The registrar of the Nova Scotia dental board,
Dr. Martin Gillis, declined to comment on the changes and referred questions to the information on the board's website.
The Chronicle Herald also has reached out to the Nova Scotia Dental Association, which represents dentists in the province.