Committed to patient safety at Ock Street

This week the BBC reported on what was described as ‘the biggest NHS patient recall in history’, following the dangerous practices of a dentist in Nottinghamshire. As a result of the actions of dentist Desmond D’Mello, more than 4000 patients needed to undertake testing for blood-borne viruses due to the extremely poor cleanliness and hygiene levels practised by Mr D’Mello. At a recent misconduct hearing carried out by the General Dental Council, 55 allegations were found to be proven.

Mr D’Mello was found to have failed to maintain basic hygiene standards by not carrying out basic tasks such as changing his gloves or surgical mask between patients. Mr D’Mello saw patients very closely back to back, sometimes seeing patients at the rate of 4 patients in just 15 minutes. This rapid turnaround led to it being very difficult to take adequate precautions to prevent cross-infection. This led to the need to test thousands of patients for viruses including HIV and hepatitis. Five of those patients tested were found to have hepatitis C.

Here at Ock Street we are fully committed to maintaining hygienic and safe conditions for all our patients. We will give free access to our policies regarding safety during dental treatment. Our dental team wash and disinfect their hands in between patients, before putting on a new pair of gloves. Our staff will also change their gloves during the course of seeing one patient, just to be extra certain that their gloves cannot become contaminated. In addition, we also have a state-of-the-art instrument preparation room where we sterilise all of our equipment thoroughly.

We’d be very happy to show you around, and to answer questions about about safety policies. You may also find it useful to view our CQC report from 2013, which led to us receiving very positive feedback.

All of the practice leaders at Ock Street are committed to patient safety. We work with our whole dental team to year on year improve our service and develop our skills in infection control in line with developments in technology available.