Extraction of the wrong tooth or teeth is a serious and avoidable clinical error causing harm to the patient. All NHS Trusts in England are required to use a surgical safety checklist in operating theatres to prevent incorrect site surgery and ensure safe management of patients. However, the majority of patients have dental extractions and other oral surgical procedures undertaken on an outpatient basis and these patients are also at risk of having an incorrect site surgical procedure such as a wrong tooth extraction. We describe our experience in developing, introducing and refining a surgical safety checklist for outpatient oral surgery along with the key strategic actions needed to ensure effective cultural change and optimum patient safety in the outpatient setting.

Patient safety is an important marker of quality for any healthcare organisation. In 2008, the British Government white paper entitled High quality care for all, resulting from a review led by Lord Darzi, identified patient safety as a key component of quality and discussed how it might be measured, analysed and acted upon. National and local clinically curated metrics were suggested, which could be displayed via a 'clinical dashboard'. This paper explains the development of a clinical effectiveness dashboard focused on patient safety in an English dental hospital and how it has helped us identify relevant patient safety issues in secondary dental care.

Over recent years there has been an increased emphasis on improving patient safety in all branches of medicine, with reducing wrong tooth extraction being a priority in dentistry. The true incidence of wrong tooth extraction is unknown but it is considered an avoidable harm and is a significant source of dental litigation. Interventions to reduce wrong tooth extraction include educational programmes encompassing human factor training, patient assisted identification, the use of checklists, marking of surgical sites and implementation of patient safety guidelines. Identified risk factors which make wrong tooth extraction more likely include; suboptimal checks and/or cross checking of relevant clinical information, unclear diagnosis, unclear documentation, ambiguity regarding notation of molar teeth, orthodontic extractions, and extractions where there are multiple carious teeth and extractions in the mixed dentition. Accurate and timely reporting of wrong tooth extraction incidents followed by analysis and sharing of findings together with implementation of improved practice will help to minimise risks of wrong tooth extraction.

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One hundred and forty one, 27-gauge local anaesthetic needles were collected, each following a single injection of local anaesthetic using four commonly performed local anaesthetic injection techniques. The needles were examined for needle tip damage under the scanning electron microscope. Ten unused needles were used as controls. Bone was contacted in 75 (59%) instances and, of these, 73 (97.3%) showed needle tip deformity. Of the four techniques used, bone contact was commonest with the inferior alveolar nerve block, occurring in 88% of instances.