Deluded Dentists?

Women with agonising toothache in the 1980s used to encounter daftnesses like these:

Saying that you are in such agonising pain that you are contemplating suicide, proves you are 'really' depressed. You do not need your imaginary pain to be dealt with; you just need antidepressants.

"Prescribing antidepressants to someone who is contemplating suicide because of the intensity and long duration of pain is a life-saving measure and I am proud of saving lives in this way." - A belief (about their women patients) commonly held by GPs in the 80s.

"He wasn't being rude to you. Speaking like that is just his way." - This was Miss Anne Atkinson's response when I told her that Mr Reg Dinsdale had repeatedly addressed me as "You Fat Depressives" (plural), instead of by my name. These two misguided health professionals worked at the Charles Clifford Dental Hospital. Mr Dinsdale was an 'eminent' oral surgeon. Miss Atkinson was a Senior Lecturer in dentistry who claimed to be trying to help me.

When I told my then GP, Dr Hazel Radley, of Mr Dinsdale's insulting way of speaking to me, she described it as "Shock Treatment", intended to 'shock' me out of believing that I was in pain!

Miss Atkinson demonstrated her own mastery of daft dental logic by insisting to me that I was not really in pain, I only thought I was in pain!

And when Mr Dinsdale was performing an apicectomy on my UL2, he told his student assistant that Depressives did not actually feel pain, they only complained about being in pain! - And when bone failed to regenerate after his poorly performed apicectomy, which had left me in greater pain than before, he told the student who was looking at the X-ray with him that 'neurotics' were very poor at regenerating bone! - Very clearly, this man was deluded. An 'ordinary dentist', a general dental practitioner, did a re-apicectomy on the UL2 the following year, and this time the op was done properly and the infection was properly removed so that the bone did at last regrow.

I was sent by Roger Heesterman - Community Dental Officer, I think his title was - in a further stage of the cynical game of pretending that something was being done to help me, to see a Mr Hirschmann, another high-up dentist at a dental hospital in another city, (Heestermann could, and should, in my opinion, have helped me himself. He was a qualified dentist after all. But I suppose there was some Dept of Health rule that people complaining of dental negligence must on no account receive any actual help, only exhausting hassle so that they'd give up their struggle.)

Hirschman said that no doubt I did have some dental problems, but that the real problem was depression. He said that he wouldn't indulge me by taking any X-rays and that none of the dentists there would help me, but possibly one of the students could be spared after the summer holidays...

In contrast to all this daft dangerous misogynistic nonsense:

I had an article published in Mensa magazine about my great suffering at the hands of high-up dental drips:  Cruelty, Negligence and the Abuse of Power in the NHS: Fighting the System. Someone sent a copy of the article to an academic health campaigner, and she wrote to me to commend me for my "excellent piece in Mensa about customer complaints". She continued, "I have been fighting the medical attitude to consumer complaints - especially from women - for years - as a member of a Regional Health Board, then Chair of the Patients Association, now as a lay member of the General Medical Council.

I certainly remember a number of cases from my days at the Patients Association of patients with intractable dental pain who were treated as neurotic or frankly loony - and all women. They were laughed at, insulted and generally had a rotten time."

She went on to suggest that I should write a similar article for the British Dental Journal to get to the professionals directly. - I did, in fact, do this, but the article was rejected, as you might, perhaps, have guessed it would be.


The very top man in the whole world on the subject of pain used to be Professor Patrick Wall of University College, London, who died in 2001. In a personal letter to me some years ago, he wrote: "Simple-minded doctors and dentists (the majority) have a built-in scale of how much pain they expect for how much damage. If you fall outside their norm, you are labelled as mad. It is they who need their heads examining. They also need to read and think."

NHS dentistry reforms have only made matters worse, and the private sector is no better.

Dentistry, an industry in decay
Article in the Sunday Telegraph

Extract:

"Last Wednesday, news broke that the Government's recent contract with NHS dentists, introduced in 2006, has been such a failure that nearly a million fewer patients are visiting the dentist, and the number of crowns, bridges and dentures being fitted has fallen by more than half, while the number of extractions has risen. An estimated 7.4 million people cannot find an NHS dentist to do elementary dental work such as fillings.

At the other end of the scale, looking in the mirror and asking why we don't look more like George Clooney and Julia Roberts, more and more of us are paying huge sums to private dentists to correct a lifetime's worth of NHS neglect, often ending up worse off than when we started."

NHS dentistry fails to expand

NHS dentistry expansion falters - Guardian

Extract:

"The government's scheme to expand NHS dentistry led to fewer patients being treated by fewer dentists in the first year of operation, official figures revealed yesterday.

Ministers had expected local NHS commissioners to buy extra capacity to make it easier for people to register for regular dental treatment. Dentists were put on a new contract that was supposed to let them escape the "drill and fill" treadmill and provide time for preventive work.

But the Department of Health acknowledged that the reform did not bring quick benefits. It said 28.1 million people went to an NHS dentist in England in the year to March - 50,000 fewer than in the previous 12 months. And the number of NHS dentists fell from 21,111 to 21,038."


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Extortionate charges by some NHS dentists

A shocking investigation into extortionate charges by NHS dentists - Independent

Government's solution to NHS dentistry crisis: a plaque!

Government's solution to NHS dentistry crisis: more plaque - Guardian

1st Extract:

"Ministers are preparing to unveil a secret weapon in their campaign to woo dentists back to work for the NHS in England. Every practice that is able to provide a quality service and show commitment to the NHS is to be given something money cannot buy. A new kind of plaque.

Department of Health officials are convinced that dentists would treasure the opportunity to brand their premises with the NHS logo - one of the most recognised symbols in the land.

Those treating a high proportion of NHS patients will be allowed to screw the NHS plaque to the front door of their surgeries and use the brand to add extra professional kudos to their letterheads. As a badge of quality, the logo may also serve as an advertisement to private patients, who pay higher fees for fillings and extractions.

Dentists, who spend their lives in a constant struggle against another sort of plaque, have spent the week berating the government for the failure of a policy that was meant to provide a better service to more patients.

2nd Extract:

"A spokeswoman denied yesterday that the new dental contract was in any way to blame for the shortage of dentists. "The NHS is continuing to expand dental services. Over the next few months, the new services due to open around the country should deliver access for a further 500,000 patients," she said."

Yeah, right! - Watch out for pigs flying past!

Too few NHS dentists.

The Big Question: Why are there so few NHS dentists, and is the service getting worse? - Independent