Dr Ralph Gilhooly, the Principal Dentist at The Dentist at Chiswick, is proactively trying to help both his patients and save his practice during the COVID19 lockdown.

He says he has two aims: to help people in pain that dentists currently can't treat and save a profession that could be in rapid decline. 

Under current regulations, all dental practices have been forced to close due to the impossibility of ensuring both dental practitioner and patient safely during the pandemic. As Ralph says, people may not realise that standard PPE is not suitable for a dentist who will be 6 inches from a stranger during normal examinations. And even more dangerous than the check-ups is the treatment. Routine procedures could result in a spray of water possibly mixed with saliva and even blood and patients could, through fault of their own, cough in the dentist's face at any moment. 

Emergency dental treatment in hospital is currently limited to two treatments: antibiotics or extractions. In the case of extractions, the patient will need to wait until regulation are eased to have any remedial cosmetic work performed so will have to live with missing teeth until then.

And dental practices have been left without the possibility of generating any income while continuing to have staff and building costs to cover. Ralph says he is in the fortunate position of being able to weather the storm but many other practices will probably go into liquidation. If Dentist@Chiswick had had to shut, 12 people would lose their jobs. Then there would be the knock on effect on the laboratories and technicians the practice uses. The full effect could be many more jobs lost.  The British Dental Association is campaigning to help private dental practices.

In a video Ralph demonstrates how a normal mask is ineffective against fluids sprayed on it:

Ralph says: "I don't want a hand out or loan (which the bank are very happy to give).  I want PPE suitable for dentistry so I can get back to my patients and work. People don’t realise that even if the lockdown is lifted, dental surgeries will not reopen for treatment."

What makes the situation even more frustrating for Ralph is that he has come up with a form of protective personal equipment that could be used to protect both patients and practitioners. He foresaw the fact that dentists would not be able to continue as normal before the lockdown actually started and designed affordable and effective PPE suitable for dentists. He has approached all pertinent parties with this but has had absolutely no success in having it properly assessed.

He has now made a video demonstrating how his PPE would work and uploaded it to the Instagram account Instagram.com/savepatientsanddentists. “This air-conditioned suit isn’t for wearing. The suit is just to prove you don’t need to spend fortune (£80) to be safe doing close up work face to face and to prove to the professional PPE designers it’s possible to make for very little money. Plus the cost of cover change between patients is only £1. And it only took about 20 minutes to make, once I had the bits. Some naysayers point out that the prototype I developed has not been tested. That is why I did the video of the basic test and hope that developers will see this and come up with a design that can be produced in bulk, once full testing has been completed."

May 5, 2020