The Getting It Right First Time (GIRFT) programme and the Faculty of Dental Surgery (FDS) at the Royal College of Surgeons are coming together for a series of three webinars to discuss how recommendations in the GIRFT national report for hospital dentistry can be used to improve care.
The webinars in early 2022 will focus on three distinct areas from the GIRFT report – restorative dentistry, oral surgery and paediatric dentistry.
They are an opportunity to discuss unwarranted variations identified in the national report which can impact the effectiveness of hospital dentistry services and ultimately patient care.
They will focus on the importance of data quality to measure clinical outcomes, improvement of equity of access to treatment through effective managed clinical networks in all areas, and integrated referral pathways.
Liz Jones, GIRFT clinical lead for hospital dentistry, and Matthew Garrett, dean of the FDS, will be co-hosting the webinars, welcoming speakers from the professional societies for each specialty.
Colleagues involved in the care of dental patients – both specialist and non-specialist, either in NHS trusts or working in the community dental service (CDS) departments – are invited to join. Dates and registration links are as follows:
- Restorative dentistry: improving data quality: 1pm on Wednesday, 19th January 2022.
- Oral surgery: improving delivery of care: 1pm on Wednesday, 26th January 2022.
- Paediatric dentistry: improving service delivery and care for children: 4pm on Wednesday, 9th February 2022. Register
Mrs Jones said: “If we want to improve dental health overall, we need to engage earlier in this cycle and take a more holistic approach, seeing oral health and prevention as integral to health and wellbeing.
“Dental disease among children continues to be unacceptably high, and I would like to see all healthcare professionals given the tools to advise and help patients to achieve good oral health, managed in an integrated way across primary and secondary care.
“We look forward to welcoming our speakers to these events, as well as the trust and CDS teams who can use our recommendations to achieve improvements in case for their patients.”
