Special Care Dentistry is all about providing dental treatment for patients who cannot access dental care from a general dental practitioner. So it includes quite a wide range of patient groups. So those who need treatment within their own homes because they’re unable to travel to the clinic, as well as some patients who may have a learning disability or severe medical problem, or patients who might require treatment under sedation or general anaesthesia because they can’t cope with treatment within the dental clinic. A lot of it is spending time with patients, getting to know patients to provide treatment for them.

I provide care support for my mom. She’s got several underlying health conditions. And I also support my brother. He lives independently and he has a package of social care, but he needs support with his shopping and organising his bills, so that’s what I was doing prior to the pandemic. So as soon as lockdown happened, for that first couple of weeks when I was on annual leave, I just isolated with my mom. But I knew that when I went back to work I would have to move out because she was at high risk. She was shielding, so I had to move out. So I made plans in those first couple of weeks to move. And my sister moved in to care for my mum, so I had to move away and just not have any contact with them. It was quite isolating. Yeah. I grew up in quite large family. So I’m used to there always been noise in the house. I’m used to people talking. I’m used to hearing different things going on. I’m not used to just having silence. 

So I spent most of my time listening to the radio just to get background conversation. 

Yeah, I’ve always been a big radio fan. I love listening to the radio, because I find you can listen to the radio and do other things as well. It’s not like TV where you’ve got to sit down and give it all of your attention. You can just put the radio on, have it on in the background and be doing sewing, because I like to sew as well. Or sometimes I knit or I do some crochet, or cooking, or doing something else, you can just have the radio in the background. I like listening to a bit of LBC for some debates, or sometimes Classic FM, if I want to hear something a bit more relaxing, or even Premier Gospel if I want to sing along. 

And that’s another thing that lockdown affected. I couldn’t physically go to church. And because we were working over weekends as well, on the Sunday, I hadn’t worked on a Sunday, actually it was the first time I’ve ever worked on a Sunday in my entire life, during lockdown, when we had to do some shifts on Sundays. So it felt really strange not being able to worship on the Sunday, but at least I had the radio where I could hear services and I could hear music as well. And I could just sing to my heart’s content in the garden, in the kitchen. So that was really uplifting.

During the coronavirus pandemic, I was redeployed into the Prevention of Admissions team within our trust. This was a team made up of a wide range of professionals and it included GPS, I think there were some Physiotherapists, Occupational Therapists, District Nurses, and the whole remit of the team was to provide treatments for patients in their own homes. 

And some of these treatments were things that would otherwise have needed admission to hospital. So we were trying to reduce the burden of hospital admission due to the coronavirus pandemic. So most of the time I was working with District Nurses to provide intravenous antibiotics for patients in their own homes. We definitely bonded, there was definitely a sense of community and togetherness within the Prevention of Admissions team. And it happened quite quickly. So it was… it was a good time actually. 

It was really strange because we used to go out and see dental patients in the community anyway. But I know at the start of lockdown when we were going out to see these Prevention of Admissions patients, all of a sudden the very few people you would see out and about, they would see you in your uniform and just start thanking you and clapping for you randomly, which I thought was really weird. And then the patients would be so grateful as well because a lot of them were really, really worried about having to be admitted to hospital. So they were quite grateful that we were coming to see them at home. 

So we got lots of chocolates. Not good for your teeth. We got flowers. We got personalised craft gifts as well. It felt really weird hearing all that clapping for the carers. And if I’m completely honest with you, it just felt really strange. I think the first time it happened, I thought, oh, that’s a nice… it’s a nice thought, a nice sentiment. But then it went on week after week after week and I thought actually, a lot of these carers, a lot of the people that I’m working with, what they really need is to be paid better for the job they do. They work really hard. They put themselves out there. And rather than clapping every week actually we should think about rewarding people properly for the risks they take doing their jobs. 

There was a report in the media by the Office for National Statistics that came out saying that ethnic minority groups: Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic groups were more likely to die from COVID-19 than white groups. And being a black woman, that was quite concerning at the time, knowing that my risk was higher, even after accounting for things like age and social deprivation I think in that particular study. At the time, it was quite concerning. But we just had to go out and do what we were asked to do, really. It’s just something you… it’s always in the back of your mind, but you’ve just got to. We had appropriate PPE to be honest. So we wore our PPE and we went out and did what we were asked to do. 

So I moved back to doing dentistry in July, and things have changed significantly compared to before Coronavirus. We have to reduce the number of patients we see because we have to leave time between each patient. We try not to do procedures that generate lots of aerosols. Me myself, it’s been a bit of a trying time for me because the protective equipment we need for dentistry - you need to be tested for the masks. You have to wear a type of mask it’s called an FFP3, and this has to be placed on your face and they use this chemical spray that you can, it’s got a really bitter taste. And you shouldn’t be able to taste it when you’re wearing this mask. And that proves that it’s actually fitting your face accurately. So that’s what I failed several times, because several different types of masks just don’t fit accurately for me. So we’re still searching for one. 

Working with people with anxiety or people with learning disabilities, they might be a bit anxious about seeing you covered in all this equipment because we have to put our equipment on before we treat them in the surgery. So the way we’ve overcome that is, we’ve taken pictures of ourselves wearing the equipment and then put it on an information leaflet that we can send out to patients before they come and see us at the surgery. And it just explains how things have changed, what the procedure is, and what they might expect us to look like when they arrive at the surgery. So we prepare them in advance, so it’s not so much of a shock when they come in now and we’re wearing this mask or we’re wearing this visor, this gown. And you can’t really communicate with us in the way they’re used to.

I think the only thing that I would say to people that didn’t go out during the lockdown – and I think this relates back to the clapping for carers – is that we’re still out there caring for people. I know during the lockdown, everybody was clapping and thinking about carers, but these same carers are still going out and doing the same sort of work caring for people. And so, just to remember that - that we’ve been working hard all year and we continue to work really hard and… not even thinking about me and the dental profession, but I’m just thinking about all the District Nurses I worked with, the Occupational Therapists, and the Physiotherapists, the Carers. 

They’re going out and working really hard. And so we really need to show them, you know, respect. All year round.