Dental therapy in the United Kingdom: part 2. A survey of reported working practices

Dental therapy in the United Kingdom: part 3. Financial aspects of current working practices

“…The 470 respondents to the previously described questionnaire survey 8 who stated that they were working as a therapist, either part-time or full-time, were the subject of this analysis. These included some who would also be qualifi ed as hygienists.…”

“…The results were cross tabulated with other questions reported on previously, 8 including the percentage of their clinical NHS time commitment, whether working in public salaried or NHS/ private dental practice settings, whether undertaking mainly hygiene duties, and the year when they gained their therapy qualifi cation. Semi-structured and open questions afforded the opportunity for respondents to provide free text answers with a qualitative perspective from which themes related to pay were extracted in order to identify key issues.…”

“…However, a previous report of fi ndings from the present survey found that some therapists in general dental practice were undertaking a substantial proportion of hygiene duties within their overall remit. 8 The debate about cost-effectiveness related to team working involving dental therapists has continued. [9][10][11] In NHS general dental practice in England and Wales, changes involving the new dental contract have required an adjustment in the mindset from fee-for-item of service (FIS) reimbursement to unit of dental activity (UDA) generation for payment.…”

Assessing the efficacy and social acceptability of using hygienist-therapists as front-line clinicians

“…The reason for this could be that the practices involved in this study have utilised H-Ts for many years, with both practices allowing H-Ts to complete restorations which is more unusual nationally. 6,18 Despite this, the evidence gathered supports the findings relating to patient acceptance of H-Ts within the existing literature. 21,[23][24][25]44 Furthermore, it confirms the acceptability of H-Ts when completing tasks previously undertaken by GDPs.…”

“…5,6 This raises a question about the rationale of using the most expensive resource (the GDP) to undertake this task, when other members of the dental team could be used safely, for example, dental hygienist-therapists (HTs). [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16] Such an approach has the potential to release resources at a practice level and also increase the capacity to care for those who currently don't access services, thereby reducing the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and equity of NHS service provision.…”