27 / 03 / 2020
Passion Led Us Here
To Dear Patients
We would like to start by thanking you again for your continued support and understanding during these very different times, and hope more than anything that you, your families, and loved ones are all safe and well.
Speaking to other dentists, friends and acquaintances, they have been impressed regarding the support, personal calls and commitment we have been offering to our patients during this time. This in turn surprised us and made us think, as we couldn’t imagine doing anything less and it has comes very naturally to us all.
Sutton Dental & Implant Clinic exists to improve the health and wellbeing of as many patients as we can
Thinking about this deeper made us realise, that it is our commitment we have for our patients and the passion we have to drive our cause forwards, that allows us to operate in this way. Sutton Dental & Implant Clinic exists to improve the health and wellbeing of as many patients as we can.
With this as our cause and reason for existence, it naturally focuses us on what we can do to help our patients on a daily basis. Therefore when lockdown was enforced and it would be no longer be safe to physically care for our patients, our immediate thoughts were how can we help them through this time? How can we help our patients maintain their oral health? How can we help them re-establish their oral health after the pandemic and continue to improve it?
Our dentists and therapists then set about recording advice videos helping our patients deal with common dental emergencies
We felt immediate response should be to provide an emergency service running 12 hours a day 7 days a week, personally managed by my wife and myself. Our dentists and therapists then set about recording advice videos helping our patients deal with common dental emergencies, as well as tips of tricks on maintaining a good and healthy diet, and keeping your gums as healthy as possible.
Reflecting back on what we achieved in such a short space of time, and observing that other Practices had done very little, gave us a real sense of achievement that we have a team driven and focused on our cause of improving the health and wellbeing of our patients.
We have now focused our thoughts onto phase 2
We have now focused our thoughts onto phase 2, which will be helping our patients re-establish their oral health once we are back at work. Our immediate focus will be treating dental decay and infection (especially with those patients that have had problems during this time), and stabilising and improving the health of your gums.
Most of our patients will fall into this second group. Without professional care the health of your gums is likely to deteriorate quicker than other areas. An excellent oral hygiene regime consisting of brushing your teeth twice a day, and using bottle brushes or floss to clean in-between the teeth, will help limit any deterioration, however this alone will not negate the need for professional hygiene care.
The health of your gums is the foundation to your overall oral health, and therefore it will be important we focus on this on our return. With this mind, we feel the majority of our patients will need additional hygiene appointments to re-establish their oral health. Therefore we will be allowing patients to ‘swap’ one of their health check appointments for an additional hygiene appointment.
For example, if you normally have 2 health check appointments and 2 hygiene appointments a year as part of your membership, we could change this to 1 health check appointment and 3 hygiene appointments instead for the year to help you get your gum health back on track.
There have been many discussions last week and this week from the powers above about when we could possibly ‘unpause’ the Practice and return to work. The current feeling is this is likely to be the first or second week in June.
As we mentioned in our previous blog we are prepared and ready to respond actively and positively to any new government guidance, and to make changes needed within the Practice, to ensure the upmost safety of our patients and team members at all times.
Our determination to help is unwavering and my wife and I continue to provide our emergency service 7 days a week from 9.30am to 8pm, helping our members with advice, antibiotics and temporary fillings kits. Our team continue to personally call our members to ‘check-in’ with them to see if they are well and if need any help during this time.
We will also be extending our working hours once we are fully operational, to help accommodate any missed appointments. If for whatever reason this is not possible or inappropriate, we will add the “value” of your missed appointment(s) to your account, which can be used as credit against any treatment you may require, whitening or oral hygiene products.
As always your continued support, commitment, kind words over the phone, email replies, cards and social media posts are truly humbling and gives us immense determination to help in any way we can.
Please stay safe and together we will get through this!
Best Wishes
Puneet and Sheetal Jain & The Team at Sutton Dental & Implant Clinic
