Dental Academy
Dental Academy Update
Thu, 20 Dec 2012 10:02:00 GMT
The Care Quality Commission – the CQC – only three words, even eight syllables, and just three simple letters – but enough to have caused stress, worry and mountains of paperwork for high street dentists throughout England and Wales in the last two years.
All primary care dental practices had to be registered with the commission by April 2011 for providing a number of regulated activities such as ‘Treatment of disease, disorder or injury’. Inspections by the CQC are compulsory, and check for compliance with a number of set standards or ‘outcomes’ such as ‘respecting and involving people who use the service’ and ‘cleanliness and infection control’. Here in Portsmouth, we are no exception. Our 46 chair teaching Dental Academy holds a primary care contract with the local Primary Care Trust, and therefore inspection has been hanging over us since our initial registration. Teaching in Primary Care Dentistry does not get more true to life than this!
The dreaded phone call came on a Thursday – ‘We will be with you on Tuesday’, the friendly voice said. There were two working days and a weekend to check everything – policies, lines of communication, protocols, staff certification – were all in place, and more importantly, to check that 70 hygiene therapy students, 20 student dental nurses, all the dental students, the administration, clinical and teaching staff were all well informed of the impending inspection. For the dental students on site that week, busily preparing for the FT1 interviews, they were able to say that they were some of the very few students in the UK to have experienced a CQC inspection first hand!
Tuesday arrived. Within as little as 15 minutes, the Inspector and his colleague had begun the process of triangulating the data. They stopped to talk to members of staff, students, and nurses at random as they walked around the building, quizzing them on safeguarding policies, consent, medical emergencies, cross infection control and much, much more. Patients were questioned regarding the level of care they had received, and whether they had understood everything that the students had told them during their treatment appointment. They then disappeared back to their base room to look at policies and audits, patient leaflets and patient satisfaction surveys, only to reappear yet again and check that these were being enacted. One of our strengths in Portsmouth is our decontamination unit, fully compliant with HTM-01-05 and inspectors stated that they were very impressed with our provision.
And suddenly it was all over. The Inspector and his colleague left the Dental Academy at about 3.30 in the afternoon following a five hour inspection. Comments from members of staff were, “that it was a bit like a Viva but after a bit you got into the swing of it” and “it was good talking about the Academy because we do tend to do things to a very high standard.” Yes, we do, and it’s good to have that confirmed by the CQC. Our report states that we are compliant, as an organisation, with all inspected outcomes Patients reported to the inspectors that they had been treated with dignity and respect, and expressed satisfaction with the care and treatment provided by students and staff at the Dental Academy. Only two years to wait until the next inspection!
Drs Sarah Hartridge, Paul Hellyer and David Radford
University of Portsmouth Dental Academy