Dental Work Abroad

budgetflyer

A few months back I needed a tooth out. Went private, £40- bang-job done. Would highly recommend it.
Finally 18 months after our local NHS dental practice closed, Ive managed to find a practice that will take my family on for NHS treatment.
The blame for this apalling situation is IMO the governments. Just like the NHS hospitals and local surgeries.Its all a mess
At my local doctors practice, you have to be dead a fortnight before anyone can see you !
Unfortunately being stupid enough to drag my self out of bed 6 days a week to go to work,the NHS is definetely not free for me.
It pees me off big style, when layabouts hand in free prescriptions for calpol, cough bottles etc
One guy whos house I was working in,I told him I had stopped smoking, offered me a box of 5 packs of 72 niccorette lozengers hed got on free prescription and decided not to bother stopping -value £70-he doesn't care-its free on his NHS
A radical reform is required right across the board.

iceman_2

Toothsmith wrote:

Interesting idea - sort of public slavery?

A shame you would have to totally re-write most employment and human rights laws in order to achieve it!

Absolute rubbish!!!!!

Have you never heard of a training bond??? most industries with expensive training have them, perfectly justifiable. Someone provides high-cost training to you, you commit to them in return, there's nothing illegal or slave-like about it.

Your unbeleivable level of arrogance is exactly why people resent dentists in this country. I've never met anyone who doesn't think they are money-grabbing rip-off merchants and your attempts to justify yourself on this forum only serve to further back this up.

alison74

pwni wrote:

Lol and I couldn't agree more with you either Alison. :T

Do you think anyone would mind if I started a second thread with the same original question?

No, just start it again and mention that you had one thread before, but it went off on a tangent !

Your questions haven't really been answered - and I am sure there are people out there that can help you.

cannyscot_2

pwni-go for it I'm interested in genuine travel trips for dentistry answers

Toothsmith

iceman wrote:

Absolute rubbish!!!!!

Have you never heard of a training bond??? most industries with expensive training have them, perfectly justifiable. Someone provides high-cost training to you, you commit to them in return, there's nothing illegal or slave-like about it.

But in those industries the place of work is provided for the employee.

Dentists have to go out and take a financial risk in setting up a business of their own.

I have heard of training bonds, and they are very easy to get out of, as legally, they do not stand up to scrutiny. Plus, they only last a year or two at most. Someone was telling me they didn't think my 8 years of NHS was enough!

DampProof

Have Polish girl(s) at work...lovely teeth and smiles
Simple... forget all the BullS**t above.Go for It. Polish dentists are as experienced and professional as any in the UK. My dentist suggested £300 per tooth for veneers...far too bl**dy greedy, probably explains why his surgery is empty???
Does that answer your question!

LizEstelle

Toothsmith, I was simply reporting the fairly clear public attitude which the profession has provoked. Please don't shoot the messenger.

I've already indicated my own frustration with what I've understood to be the Government's incompetence on this one. That doesn't negate the fact that politicians' fortunes march to the drum of public perception.

Rather than emigrate, if I were you I'd be busy lobbying your colleagues to hold out a fairly substantial olive branch to the NHS and take the heat out of the situation. Nobody wants 'really cheap' dental work - but neither, on the other hand, do we want what appears to be happening now. Talk of 'enslavement' is to cloud the issue with hysteria when we we all want is to work this out reasonably. It shouldn't be rocket science.

Steve_xx

Toothsmith wrote:

But in those industries the place of work is provided for the employee.

Dentists have to go out and take a financial risk in setting up a business of their own.

I have heard of training bonds, and they are very easy to get out of, as legally, they do not stand up to scrutiny. Plus, they only last a year or two at most. Someone was telling me they didn't think my 8 years of NHS was enough!

Dentists don't have to set up in their own practise, they can go work for someone else.

Toothsmith

LizEstelle wrote:

Rather than emigrate, if I were you I'd be busy lobbying your colleagues to hold out a fairly substantial olive branch to the NHS and take the heat out of the situation. Nobody wants 'really cheap' dental work - but neither, on the other hand, do we want what appears to be happening now. Talk of 'enslavement' is to cloud the issue with hysteria when we we all want is to work this out reasonably. It shouldn't be rocket science.

I now have a practice, with a cohort of patients who are happy with what I do, and who pay me a resonable fee for doing it. This is exactly the same for the vast majority of private practices out there. Only 50% of the population ever went to the dentist regularly anyway. There simply wouldn't be enough dentists if everybody suddenly wanted to go.

So even if a fair proportion of the population do feel we are just greedy rip off merchants, it doesn't really make much difference, as there are enough 'more enlightened' people who don't. (And that isn't just down to income either, I have patients with very low incomes. It's a matter of appreciation, and placing value in a service)

The vast majority of the patients I have were also willing to sign their kids up for private treatment too, back in April when I was forced out of the NHS.

I get more patients from the still unfilled NHS practice down the road, than I loose to them.

In order to go back onto the NHS, I would have to significantly lower my standards.


Why on earth would I hold out an olive brach to the NHS?

I don't need them, and my patients would probably leave me if I went back to it.

I would be far too busy. It would be months before I could do treatment identified at check-ups, and it would be impossible to slot emergencies in on the day they rang up.

As I have said earlier, I will see any patient the Government is willing to pay for though. But my fees are non-negotiable.

On the subject of emigration, I now have 4 personal friends, 2 of which I qualified with, and 2 of which were working fairly locally to me. All had NHS practices in areas which would not be easy to convert to private practice.

3 are now in Australia - the last one left 2 months ago, the fourth is in New Zealand.

I agree with you that dentistry has not presented good PR. The people we are up against are Grand Masters though.

I am the messanger that is being shot here!!!!

Toothsmith

Steve_xx wrote:

Dentists don't have to set up in their own practise, they can go work for someone else.

But that someone else will be a dentist who owns his own surgery, and has all the financial pressures that go with it.

Unless you mean the Government run places?

These are either the community clinics - who only see special needs kids & adults, or access centres, who just tend to sort out emergencies and then tell you to find your own dentist.

New graduates do do 'vocational training' for a year or two within an ordinary NHS practice, but as I think I mentioned in an earlier post, the funding for these places, since the new contract, has become so bad, that at the end of their course this year, 60% of Birmingham Dental Hospital graduates had no VT job to go to!!

If they don't do VT, their only job options are private practice, or go abroad!!! They are not allowed to have an NHS contract without doing VT!

This is what we're up against!