Lessons in sign language, training hospital nurses, arranging awards ceremonies and showing local teachers how to deal with a dental trauma.

These may seem like out of the ordinary tasks for dental team members, and in many ways they are. But it is these tasks that have led to dental teams throughout the UK being rewarded for their dedication to NHS dentistry at the recent Focus Awards.

The BDA, along with the Department of Health, the Welsh Assembly Government and the Department of Health, Social Services and Public Safety in Northern Ireland got together to award excellence in dental patient care. Both community dental services (CDS) and general dental practices were well represented at the awards, showing that the UK is well populated with dental teams striving to make a difference to the public they serve.

So how did all this come about? What have these teams been doing that makes them award winning?

Good practice

The winners of the excellence in good practice award and overall Focus Award winners were the Calderdale and Huddersfield Community Dental Services. They were approached by a matron at one of their hospitals, who was concerned about the oral health and hygiene of patients on the medical wards. An oral care plan and an oral assessment tool were developed and the oral health promotion officers, with help from a hygienist, incorporated them into a training package for ward staff. To complement and support it, the team have introduced an information pack to the wards and hold workshops for nurses, nursing auxiliaries and healthcare assistants to raise awareness about the importance of mouth care. This enables ward staff to identify oral conditions and help maintain good standards for patients.

The oral health promotion officers also worked with the hospital pharmacies to modify what was supplied to the wards, for example the artificial saliva, and funding has been secured for a range of appropriate toothbrushes to be available on all wards. This team has taken practical steps to make a real difference to the comfort and oral health of in-patients within the hospital trusts: effective oral health promotion making a difference.

Patients with special healthcare needs

Another community dental service was awarded the Focus Award for excellence in treating patients with special healthcare needs. Zetland House Clinic, Northallerton, treats many of the adults with learning disabilities in the area but they were frustrated by the lack of response they received from the carers of this group. After seeking the advice of the local community resource team for learning disabilities, this clinic focused on young adults and school leavers with learning disabilities. They produced a special leaflet with the help of speech and language therapists, using an easy-to-read format and Makaton sign language symbols. They also prepared an accompanying leaflet to distribute to the carers of these adults. The leaflet explains the service that is provided and how they can access dental care. Once these patients arrive in the clinic, there are two staff specially trained in Makaton sign language.

The staff at Zetland House also wanted to know if there was anything that they could do, but hadn't thought of yet. So they devised a questionnaire that was sent to all adults with learning disabilities in the area. The response rate was good due to the efforts of the team and they received requests for help with mouth care from some of these adults and their carers. Zetland House now runs a training programme in mouth care for carers. Where adults are being cared for by relatives, the staff provide a special home visit at a time to suit the family. Where patients are living in community homes, they have developed a chart to record when mouth care was carried out. The staff from Zetland House even went to care homes during the night shift to train the night staff how to use the chart. The new charts have proved to be very popular with these carers, and this has been reflected in the improvement of oral hygiene of their patients.

Child dental care

The third CDS that entered the Focus Awards were from Northern Ireland, and their idea was to help reduce the dental traumas that children were experiencing at school, and to help teachers to deal with them when they happened. At least half of the primary schools in the area had pupils experiencing mouth injuries each year and almost all of the schools were interested in having training for dealing with dental trauma. The team put together a package that included a training session for all staff, information sessions and resource packs for new entrants and their parents, and resources to help teachers to deliver oral health programmes (for example stories, games and worksheets with a dental theme). A first aid kit for mouth injuries and a wall chart was provided for all participating schools.

For the children who were leaving primary school and moving on to senior school another initiative was introduced to protect their mouths from dental trauma: a reduced-price made-to-measure mouth guard for every child in year 8 to use whilst playing sports. Some children even choose to have them in their school or house colour. This was truly a team-based initiative that involved dentists, dental nurses and oral health promotion facilitators working with teachers and other school-based staff. This team from the Area CDS, Armagh and Dungannon Health and Social Services Trust won the award for excellence in child dental care.

Patient involvement

The Wessington Way Dental Practice in Sunderland have gone out of their way to involve their patients and keep them updated on the activities of the practice. Once a month a patient forum meets to discuss events in the practice and a more informal version, the junior patients forum, has recently been introduced so that the younger patients are represented too. The patient forum has proved very useful, and has been effective at both coming up with ideas for the practice at the same time as stopping the practice from doing things that might have proved disastrous.

This year Wessington Way held 'patient of the year' awards to show their patients how much they appreciate their help and involvement. All members of staff and any patients who wished, could nominate up to three patients with an explanation of why they nominated that person. The awards were given out at a garden party and included an award for 'patient of the year', 'young patient of the year', 'patient who has overcome anxiety' and a special award for services to the practice. It was a real community event, the local MEP presented one of the awards, as did the chairman of the patient forum, and even some of the practice suppliers joined in the fun. The winner of the 'young patient of the year' award was so pleased with his cinema ticket prize that he said he had 'jewels round his heart'. Wessington Way also keep their patients informed of their news with a practice newsletter, a website and a patient information board. For all this the Wessington Way Dental Practice was awarded with the focus award for excellence in patient information and involvement.

A patient friendly enviroment

Queensferry Dental Surgery in Flintshire won the award for excellence in creating a patient friendly environment. Each waiting room has a video displaying information about oral health, healthy eating and information about each of the dentists that work at the practice. They provide daily newspapers and weekly magazines in the waiting rooms, and the toys that they provide for children are professionally cleaned every month. Freshly brewed coffee is always available too. The practice is decorated to a high standard, with regularly painted walls, a granite worktop at reception, relaxing music playing in the background and framed prints in the waiting rooms. These all make the practice a pleasant place to be and a renovated courtyard to the rear of the practice is a nice place to sit (in the summer anyway). One patient appreciates it so much, she completes a 70 mile round trip in heavy traffic to visit this practice!

These teams are working hard within their roles to provide an excellent service to their patients, and have been rewarded as a result. They aren't alone. If you think your practice or CDS is providing an excellent service, why don't you share your good ideas and write to the Vital letters page, telling the dental world how great your team is. Or better still watch out for the Focus Awards 2004.