On 10 July I attended a meeting of the paediatric Managed Clinical Network in London, instead of watching the football!
The aim of the meeting was to ensure that children can access optimised dental care in the event of a dental trauma or acute emergency across London and to identify:
- the challenges faced by dentists
- the challenges faced by services
- the challenges in communicating between services
- ideas to support improvement
It was important for an LDC member to attend this meeting to participate in the efforts to standardise the urgent dental care pathways for children in London.
Speakers discussed various aspects of dental care in London; challenges in providing emergency dental care for children; funding; and standardisation of advice and guidance. They also discussed the need for improved urgent dental care for trauma patients, including the establishment of specialised centres and better communication and support. Additionally, speakers emphasised the importance of training UDC practitioners in trauma cases and the need for an enhanced pathway with specialist referrals.
The next Paediatric MCN meeting will take place in September. We have 2 months to reflect on the challenges of urgent dental care for children and to add any further points, ideas to improve the urgent paediatric dental care. If you have any comments or feedback you would like me to raise at this meeting please email contact@ldc.org.uk and mark your email as Paediatric MCN.
This was a very interesting meeting with many ideas to improve children’s urgent dental care access. My favourite idea is the creation of an app through which a GDP could contact a paediatric specialist in case of an emergency for guidance and a further rapid hospital referral if needed.
The next meeting will be in September where we will investigate if any funding may be available for the 111 Paediatric Dentistry Pathway from the ICBs.
Piotr is the SWL LDC Paediatric MCN lead. If you are interested in working with the Paediatric MCN for your LDC please email: contact@ldc.org.uk
