Patients’ 70-mile trip to see a dentist

PATIENTS are facing a 70-mile journey to see a dentist amid a worsening recruitment crisis, a professional association has warned.

Low morale among NHS dentists has left practices struggling to recruit, the British Dental Association (BDA) said.

A survey for the association found that more than two thirds of NHS practices in England that had tried to hire in the past year had struggled to fill their vacancies.

Dentists carrying out the most NHS work are more likely to be disillusioned than those conducting more private work. The association said the impending crisis was illustrated by Plymouth’s director of public health being instructed by councillors to make an urgent request for help to NHS England, amid 9,000-long waiting lists fuelled by staff shortages and patients facing a 70-mile journey for treatment.

Eddie Crouch, the vice chairman of the BDA, said: “It is a damning indictment of current policy that the dentists who go over and above with NHS care are now paying the price in low morale.

“The constant treadmill of targets and pay cuts mean something has to give, and services cannot be maintained when practices are unable to fill vacancies.

“Failure to act is already leaving millions of patients across the country in limbo. We look to ministers to take responsibility and show dedicated health professionals that NHS care is not an unattractive option.” The BDA has previously reported that 58 per cent of NHS dentists said they were planning to leave in the next five years.

Dentists earlier this year warned that Britain was being forced to turn to charities from the developing world amid a crisis in dentistry.

In a letter to The Daily Telegraph last month, the signatories said that they were being swamped by red tape and targets, without time or resources to prevent tooth disease, with care so poor that charities from abroad were stepping in to provide aid.

They warned of a “national health disaster” in dentistry, leaving prevention neglected and patients untreated.

Dentaid, a charity which works across Africa, Asia and Central America, set up its first UK scheme two years ago with local dentists providing free services, targeting patients on low incomes who are given free care or asked to pay if they can.

A recent BBC analysis of 2,500 dental practices featured on the NHS Choices website found that half were not taking new adult NHS patients.

And two fifths of practices said that they were not accepting children as new patients.

It has also been reported that in 24 local authorities in England, dentists can only take on private patients.

Some patients unable to register with an NHS dentist have reportedly taken matters into their own hands and pulled their own teeth out.

Rebecca Brearey, who lives in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, told the BBC last year that she had been trying to get a dentist for four years, but had been told there was a two-year waiting list.

She said: “It’s got so bad that after taking a combination of paracetamol and alcohol I ripped my half-rotten teeth out.”

More than £3 billion a year, or around 3 per cent of England’s total NHS budget, is spent on providing NHS dental care, according to Public Health England.

But the BDA has said that 21million adults and five million children have not recently seen an NHS dentist.

The NHS says 95 per cent of those who want an appointment are able to get one.