To all our patients,
We hope that you and your families are well and staying safe.
I would like to update you on the current situation with Dentistry in Northern Ireland. On 23rd March 2020, the Chief Dental Officer for Northern Ireland instructed all dental practices to cease routine treatments and all aerosol generating procedures (AGPs) because of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Our practice was never totally closed as we were still able to help any of our patients who were in pain. For some of you, this was advice or prescriptions and for others it involved temporary dressings or extractions at our practice.
Under the current regulations, any treatment involving an aerosol generating procedure (e.g. fillings, root canal treatments) has to be referred to one of the Urgent Dental Centres set up by the Health Boards. I am pleased to report that for any our patients who required this, we were able to arrange an appointment on their behalf on the same or next day.
The situation detailed above is known as Phase 1 and was covered in the media yesterday. Urgent dental treatment (Phase 1) comprises the following:-
- Severe dental pain
- Swelling
- Dental trauma
- Uncontrolled bleeding
If you experience any of the above symptoms, please be assured that we are still here for you. We can be contacted at the usual practice number (02890832022) to get further details on our triage procedure.
At Tumelty Dental Practice, we are very experienced in providing a very high level of cross-infection control and we have been working hard to put additional precautions including enhanced PPE in place to keep both you and our team safe when we are allowed to move to Phase 2 and Phase 3.
Myself and the team look forward to seeing you all again soon.
Kind regards,
Dr Paul Tumelty