Presentations 2020: Special Care

398 - A Service Evaluation to capture the level of complexity of patients accessing an Emergency Dental Clinic.

JR Joseph C Curtin
Presented by: Julian Joseph
Cardiff Dental Hospital

Introduction: Welsh Government published “Taking Special Care Dentistry in Wales Forward” in 2017. A key development action recommended in the report was to develop data collection systems to capture Special Care Dentistry need and severity in a timely way across all dental providers. The British Dental Association (BDA) Case Mix Tool is widely recognised as a reliable tool for measuring patient complexity. The 2019 updated Case Mix Tool uses six identifiable criteria to measure this complexity – ability to communicate, ability to cooperate, medical status, oral risk factors, access to oral care and legal and ethical barriers to care. Objectives: a) To capture data regarding complexity/additional needs of patients attending a Dental Emergency clinic b) To understand if an acute dentistry service is a valuable location for gaining Special Care Dentistry experience c) To gain feedback from clinicians on the ease of use of the BDA Case Mix Tool in an acute dentistry setting Methodology: Using a Powerpoint presentation, the BDA Case Mix Tool was introduced to Dental Core Trainees (DCTs) and the dentists were calibrated in the use of the tool with sample case studies. Information/reference sheets for scoring the BDA Case Mix tool were placed in each surgery and the DCTs used the Case Mix Tool to score the complexity of each patient that they treated. DCTs were also asked to give feedback on the ease of use of the tool via the data collection sheets. Data was collected for 100 patients. Results and conclusion: Data collection is currently being carried out and the results are presented in this paper.
Consent Statement: There are no details on individual patients reported within the abstract.

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