Blog

July Newsletter 2025

Summer is here! We hope you are enjoying the longer days and Wimbledon. We certainly have a heat wave here in SW London. It has been a real pleasure to come in to work with the air conditioning units in full swing in the surgeries and patient lounge. Many of you have opted to come in a little earlier for their appointment to cool down in the waiting area.

Dr Nancy Yousef at Wimbledon

A huge thank you to Dr Nancy’s patient Mohamed who kindly gifted her a pair of Wimbledon tickets. Dr Nancy had the pleasure of going to Wimbledon on the weekend together with her daughter, Olivia. Thank you Mo!

Work Experience

This week, we welcomed Grace to the practice to take part in some work experience. Grace has just completed her GCSE exams and is contemplating a career in dentistry. Thank you to those of you who allowed her to sit in during your appointment with us. It’s a very useful exercise for any young person who is interested in becoming a dentist to shadow a dentist and see how our day to day life looks like.

We believe it is invaluable for young people to take part in work experience. It has become harder and harder for young people to gain a place at a dental practice or similar health care setting, yet this is a vital requirement to truly understand the role in its entirety. Dental schools hold work experience in high esteem and deem it mandatory for people applying to study dentistry.

Grace enjoyed her time with us at NHS Dentist and is now keener than ever to pursue a care in dentistry.

CQC Inspection

Thank you to those of you who filled in the patient satisfactory questionnaire for the CQC, we received 100% satisfaction from our wonderful patients.

While we are still awaiting their outcome, their inspection feedback summary report was all very positive and complimentary to the team and management. The practice met all requirements for the five above areas, Safe, Effective, Caring, Responsive and Well-led.

Some of their comments were;

• “Staff are extremely conscientious and caring and deliver a very valuable service to the local community. It is obvious that most staff are happy and looked after. 100% of staff said they felt the practice was well-run.”
• “Patient feedback was 100% positive. Patients feel comfortable at the practice. Complaints are handled well and in a timely manner.”
• “You were all knowledgeable and it was obvious that you wish to get things right first time.”
• “The practice was clean, tidy and accessible. Dental records were of excellent quality. The decontamination processes were carried out very well.”
• “NHS Dentist is a huge practice. You have created very efficient systems to deal with the volume of patients seen.”

Needless to say, the entire team was thrilled to receive such praise and positive feedback acknowledging the hard work that takes place through patient care and behind closed doors to ensure compliance is achieved and in place.

Inhalation Sedation with Dr Aneeta Thankachan

Dr Aneeta completed her training in inhalation sedation last year. She has since been treating anxious patients under inhalation sedation to ensure they are comfortable during their treatment.

Inhalation sedation in dental settings is a technique used to help patients relax during dental procedures. It involves breathing in a mixture of Nitrous Oxide (N₂O)—commonly known as “laughing gas”—and oxygen through a small mask placed over the nose.

The advantages of inhalation sedation are, it’s safe and well-controlled for both adults and children, there is no need for needles, which can be helpful for needle-phobic patients and patients can usually drive home afterward, unlike with deeper sedation or general anaesthesia.

Patient Feedback and Testimonial: as seen on Google

• “I’ve been a patient here for years, and my daughter has been coming since birth, every visit has always been a pleasant experience. The level of customer service is consistently exceptional”.
• “Most recently, my 4 year old daughter needed a tooth removed. Understandably, we were both nervous, especially since sedation was recommended. But the staff were incredibly informative, kind, friendly, and so reassuring throughout the entire process”.
• “A big thank you to Aneeta and Regina for going above and beyond to make this experience a positive one for both of us. We truly appreciate the care and professionalism from start to finish. Highly recommend! X”

If you would like to know more about Inhalation Sedation and how you can book a consultation with Dr Aneeta, please e-mail treatment@nhsdentist.com or call 2076101110 to speak to one of our treatment coordinators, Andreea or Kerry.

Fail to Attend

When patients fail to attend (FTA) or “no-show” for dental appointments, it can have several negative effects on a dental practice—financially, operationally, and in terms of patient care.

As a busy dental practice, we want to utilise our resources efficiently to be able to offer as much time as possible to our waiting patients. While we work really hard to inimise any fail to attend by sending multiple reminders and calling patients, we do find some patients still fail to show up on their appointment time without any prior notice.

The consequences for this are serious for many reasons:

Patient care

Missed appointments may result in delayed diagnoses or worsening oral health issues, it’s harder to follow through on treatment plans when visits are missed and most importantly, frequent FTAs can lead to dismissal from the practice.

Operational disruption

Empty slots are hard to fill on short notice, staff spend more time calling to confirm or reschedule appointments, but more importantly, patients waiting to be seen due to availability miss an opportunity.

Financial burden

Each missed appointment represents lost income which has an effect on staff time, dental operatory setup, and sterilisation efforts that go unused.

In the month of June, we had around 170 patients failing to attend their appointments, this equated to 70 hours of loss time we could have served other patients.

Please be mindful of cancelling your appointment 48 hours ahead if you can’t make it. This way, we can offer it to other patients and work more efficiently.

What our patients say about us!

Thank you for being a valued part of our dental family. We look forward to seeing your smiles soon!

 

Sincerely,

The Team at NHS Dentist

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