Dental communication to pharmacies
As you are aware dentists currently are not allowed to carry out face to face consultations. They are taking phone calls from patients and triaging them to appropriate hubs.
Somerset Partnership have been listed as the Urgent Care Hub for Dental Care in Dorset. Therefore the Somerset SOP (attached HERE) will be applicable in Dorset as Somerset Partnership is the employer for the Dorset salaried staff, who will be working to their terms and conditions and all trust policies.
Asymptomatic patients will be seen at the Browning Centre in Boscombe and any symptomatic patients will be seen at Dorset County Hospital in the Special Care Dentistry Department. In addition to patients who have significant and urgent dental needs, the dentists will also be responding to urgent calls from patients and triaging these remotely. There will be a need for some of these patients to have antibiotic prescriptions.
An arrangement has been set up in both Dorset and Somerset as follows:
- Triage dentist (working remotely) identifies the need for antibiotic
- Triage dentist asks the patient to nominate their chosen pharmacy which has an NHS.net email account
- Triage dentist writes details of medicine to be prescribed in patient’s clinical record (R4). They will set up a template to include name, form, strength, dosage, directions and quantity together with the patients nominated pharmacy
- Triage dentist emails patient name and R4 number to asymptomatic patient hub where dentist is working and will have access to FP10s
- Asymptomatic hub dentist completes FP10 in accordance with the SOP for Emergency Supply at the Request of Doctor or Dentist
- Asymptomatic hub team will email the FP10 to the pharmacy using the NHS.net email address, having also contacted the pharmacy by phone where possible
- Asymptomatic hub team will post the FP10 to the relevant pharmacy on the same day
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Stakeholder briefing on Urgent Dental Centres HERE with information on where patients can go for emergency dental care.
