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In case it has missed you or passed your attention, many of the new NHS General Dental Practice contracts which are out to tender are 8 x 8 365.

As near as dammit, the practices are expected to open 8am – 8pm 365 days a year because that’s what the patient wants.

While I understand the need to look after our ‘clients’, while I understand people can’t now take time off work to look after their health there is, as always with these things, a considerable flip side which needs some consideration and examination.

To imagine that there is a never-ending supply of dentists, dental nurses, receptionists and technicians would be a mistake but that’s someone else’s problem apparently.

Make the strategic decision at the top end and open 8am – 8pm to please the public (because apparently that’s what they want) and someone else will fix the man power issue.

The man power issue is quite simply fixed by people working more days and longer hours. This was demonstrated by a lady who attended one of my courses recently for an inspirational two days of implant dentistry training, only to return back home on the Friday evening to work 8am – 8pm Saturday and Sunday.

That’s a personal choice which I completely understand but it’s an option that has been opened and one which is being foisted upon people, I feel, against their will at times.

Who decided that dental practices should be open 8am – 8pm on a Sunday? Who the f*** thought that was a good idea? You’re talking about businesses which are ‘ma and pa’ businesses and these are the best ones. The other ones are owned by corporations who don’t give a s*** about the welfare of the people that work for them and are only interested in sending money back to the pension fund that owns them.

And so, another nail in the coffin as we break healthcare professionals and allied workers and smash them into the ground for something that the public want.

I’m sure if you ask the public a leading question as they walk down the street they’ll tell you that they ‘want’ practices to be open 8am – 8pm on a Sunday but I’m sure if you asked them if they wanted to have a dentist five years from now, they would probably say they wanted that too.

On a larger scale, if you were a bright 17-year-old with good GCSE results looking for a career option for the future and someone told you about the new NHS GDS contracts, do you think you’d be encouraged to head in that direction?

Patients want immediate dental implants and liposuction and facial aesthetics. They want hair transplants, vaginoplasty and to decide the eye colour and sex of their children before they’re conceived.

When did what the patient needs disappear under a wave of what the patient wants? When did the health and wellbeing of the people who look after the patient’s needs disappear below that again?

Maybe the people, back in the day when I was growing up, in the ‘keep Sunday special’ campaign who were labelled as cranks and idiots really had something there, really had an insight into where we were going and how bad it was going to be.

I don’t want my gym to be open 24 hours a day (I don’t actually have a gym anyway) I don’t want to visit the doctor on New Years Day to talk about my varicose veins (I don’t have those either) I don’t want to work Saturdays unless I absolutely have to because I want to spend it with my family.

Why don’t we have a society that makes it compulsory that people can have time off work for healthcare? Perhaps that doesn’t fit between the lines of the capitalist powerful, but it fits between the lines of a sensible society that doesn’t expect an exploited young dental nurse to work seven days a week 8am – 8pm which is exactly what this type of system will encourage.

Blog Post Number: 1945