Asked for Dental NHS Scale and Polish.Told "Go to Hygienist at £25 extra"

jugglebug

welshdent wrote: »

Booze toothsmith isn't referring to THAT equipment ;-) he is referring to things such as washer disinfectors and other such pointless expensive devices that dont work

Dont forget the bags and date stamp to make sure the mirror isnt 22 days old

coldstreamalways

Hope you've autoclaved your hair as well juggle, heaven only knows what horrors our aseptic patients would experience if we didn't bake ourselves at 138 degrees overnight. Absolutely unbelievable. I have had to close one treatment session everyday so my nurse can do the stamping and bagging and HTM bits and bobs. How that is improving patient care I really don't know.

boozercruiser

brook2jack wrote: »

As someone who used to be involved in practice inspections I can tell you there are no regulations as so what a dental surgery has to have to actually do dentistry eg mirrors, handpieces, dental chair etc. , but there are thousands of regulations regarding "incidental equipment " ,paperwork,employment you have to have eg. emergency drugs, oxygen, washer disinfectors!!!!!, water supply with non return, sinks with no overflows , lockable file cabinets, written policies on paper clip usage etc.

Someone elsewhere described a dental surgery as a building entirely surrounded by regulations so I'm afraid that that pub consultation is definately out.

As for a quick peek round, well as dentists in the UK are twice as likely to be sued as those in the US the only dentist willing to do this would be someone who wanted a very short career.

So if there is some Poor Cash Strapped Rioting Student out there trying to decide what extremely well paid profession to go into....

You wouldn't advise Dentistry then?:D

brook2jack

Interestingly recent research has shown the VAST majority of dentists would not recommend it as a career to their children. You can read into that as you will.

boozercruiser

coldstreamalways wrote: »

Hope you've autoclaved your hair as well juggle, heaven only knows what horrors our aseptic patients would experience if we didn't bake ourselves at 138 degrees overnight. Absolutely unbelievable. I have had to close one treatment session everyday so my nurse can do the stamping and bagging and HTM bits and bobs. How that is improving patient care I really don't know.

Must admit that I had to look up the meaning of 'Autoclave'......

n.
A strong, pressurized, steam-heated vessel, as for laboratory experiments, sterilization, or cooking.

God...with learning all about the trials and tribulations of Dentists here........I was ALMOST feeling sorry for 'moaning' in the first place.

And then I think of the very nice 'reported' rewards of over £100,000 annual salary SOME Dentists are on....and the sorry feeling quicky goes!:rotfl:

Great Respect and no offence meant of course!:)

welshdent

Booze you make a major mistake with your comments .... salary .... I am on no salary. None whatsoever. I get no holiday pay and all my sick pay is paid for by an insurance policy I pay in to. I have said before ... we are all self employed. I honestly do not know ANY associate dentists earning 100K (certainly not solely on NHS work) .... but if they did then they would have physically had to carry out that amount of work in the first place. Also IF they were to earn that much then they should not be derided by thanked for the amount of tax they have to pay. We see every single penny go as there is no PAYEE. Its all ... save it up and pay lump sums. Take for example a kitchen fitter .... If they fit 1 kitchen they get paid for 1 kitchen. Fit 5 and you are paid for 5. Dentists are only undertaking the jobs asked of them and being paid accordingly.

Also the fee you pay over the counter barely corresponds to what the dentist actually takes home. The dentist is usually the sole income generator for the business (which is what it is). They must generate enough cash to pay for every single thing. Expenses are on average around 60% of gross. That means that at BEST the dentist would recieve 40% of what is taken. Then tax it.

Personally I give my principal 60% of my gross and then I pay 50% of my lab fees (which is a bit pants seeing as what is taken off me!!). My annual lab bill is around about £15000. Sometimes less sometimes more ... but I am mostly NHS so you can bet that its the cheaper items .... a private practice lab bill may be significantly higher. After than I am taxed.

the press have zero idea how to explain dentistry to the public. The government know this so they leak inaccurate reports knowing we can be made to look greedy even though the stories are wrong. The public just swallow it all up.
If someone is taking home the figures you speak of then its probably because they have diversified their income streams. That said, no one seems to be moaning about solicitors or barristers etc etc etc.

brook2jack

boozercruiser wrote: »

God...with learning all about the trials and tribulations of Dentists here........I was ALMOST feeling sorry for 'moaning' in the first place.

And then I think of the very nice 'reported' rewards of over £100,000 annual salary SOME Dentists are on....and the sorry feeling quicky goes!:rotfl:

Great Respect and no offence meant of course!:)

Cue talk of new Porsches in car parks, moneygrabbing etc.

Well Welshdent,Coldstream, Jugglebug etc how do you make ends meet on £100,000?

Booze just so you know and can look up average UDA value is £21. You know band one treatment is one UDA.

70% of all dentists are associates ie they don't own practice. Associates earn before tax,NI etc roughly 35% of their gross income. So that means to earn £100,000 before tax you have to do roughly £290,000 worth of treatment.

On the NHS that is 13,600 udas. Taking a standard associate 47 week working year working 5 days a week that means doing 58 band one treatments a day and nothing else (check up ,s and p, xrays etc) . If any of those people need fillings etc you would need to do that at weekends because the minute any one of those people would need treatment you lose money.


That means all paperwork and courses are done at weekends and evenings.

As you can clearly see it is a nonsense that one person can earn this money on the NHS. The average associate contract is for 8000 UDAs but over 60% of all NHS dentists failed to hit their UDA targets last year, so few will have achieved that . The rate of dental inflation is 10% and there has been a less than 0.1% fee rise to dentists for the last couple of years so effectively for the last three years there have been pay cuts.

100% private dentists earn approx 5% more than NHS dentists (overheads are much higher in private practice).

However a small percentage of dentists who put themselves into enormous debt, and work on average 10 hours a week more than associates, buy and run small to medium size businesses. For a few years after qualifying when they are slow and inexperienced, and before they no longer can work at the pace and intensity that earning a good amount entails , they can earn a very good wage. They are self employed business men with all the risks that entails.

I don't earn anything like £100,000 but I don't begrudge those who do. I prefer to have a life outside dentistry and be able to walk away at the end of the day without the constant worry.

ps we train newly qualified dentists. On average at the moment they come out with £40,000 student debt. With the increase in tuition fees this is likely to mean £80,000 debt. I am at a loss to think how any of this generation ,even if they were mad enough, are ever going to own their own practice. Cue more corporate owners who will be the only people able to raise the large amounts involved.

Toothsmith

I would always have recommended the career to a student I thought was suitable - right up to the last couple of years.

Now I wouldn't. Especially with this new tuition fees robbery.

I just wish I was 15 yrs nearer retirement. Or had less family ties to the UK.

welshdent

Toothsmith for me its the family ties. If I wasnt so close to my parents I would be on the next flight to australia. I have a number of friends working out there and they make a decent living doing 3 days a week and generally enjoying life in the sun. In those 3 days they see at most 15 patients a day. That would be busy!! My best friend was out there but chose to come back for some additional training but is returning after. He said the life out there as a dentist was great. I have been a few times for holidays and loved it. Me mammy keeps dragging me back though

brook2jack

I do career talks for people intending to be dentists. The hoops they have to jump through just to get into dental school now.... 3As shortly to be A* , higher than average UKCAT scores, at least two weeks work experience at various clinics, Hepb vaccinations with a good seroconversion, CRB , and then the interview to get on the most competitive course after vets.

I have to tell 15 year olds that they have to have already started work on their cvs re extracurricular activites , D of E etc. to even stand half a chance.

Then watch the shock when they know how much debt they will be in and that the "salary" the media tells them they will earn is a fiction for most dentists.

It's a great job and you can earn a good living but it's being strangled by the ridiculous regulation and the corrosive and , it sometimes seems, universal pillorying of the profession by journalists and the Great British public.