Dental Quality Improvement

Health Education and Improvement Wales offers several resources for dental teams to use in their quality improvement work. Some resources are only available within Wales, such as an eLearning course, and a practice development tool, but other resources are available and free to access. Dental teams outside Wales will have to assess which of the tools provided would be relevant to their practice.

The tools available include:

• A guide to clinical audit for dental teams, with sample audits. The examples include antimicrobial prescribing; periodontal treatment and disease; the consent process in endodontics; waste disposal in dental practice; health and safety; radiography; record keeping; referrals; root treatment, and time management.  A ‘cookbook’ for audit projects is also provided.
• Useful Resources. Links to useful resources on mouth cancer.
• A section on the Maturity Matrix Dentistry (MMD), a practice development tool. It is free for practices in Wales with NHS contracts. It also links to the original research paper which would be useful for any dental team.
• Introductory information on Patient Safety and Human Factors. This section contains a brief introduction to the role of human factors in accident prevention.
• Peer Review Groups. This is a description of the operation and role of dental peer review in patient safety. Some forms are only available to practices in Wales, but the process is relevant to any dental team that would like to use it.
• QI Project Examples. These resources include slide presentations on several QI projects including an Oral Maxillo-Facial Surgery example; hospital x-rays; fluoride varnish application in children;  instrument sterilisation, and other projects.
• A Quality Improvement tool for ionising radiation. This is a checklist, available as a Word document, with accompanying guidance notes. It refers to UK legislation and guidance, but the principles will be widely applicable.
• Wrong tooth extraction. A survey of dentists and therapists in Wales identified common themes in many wrong tooth extractions. The dental section at Health Education and Improvement Wales produced a pre-extraction checklist for use in dental practices (also available in Welsh).

This is an excellent set of resources, and Health Education and Improvement Wales deserve considerable credit for making many of them freely available.

Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay