Bad tooth pain but can't get an appointment - please help

A friend of mine has been suffering from bad tooth pain for a couple of months now. She's taking loads of pain killers and I'm pretty worried about her.

She's recently moved to Yorkshire and tired to sign up to the dentists in her local town but they refused her say they weren't taking on new patients until June. She called them back in June and they said they weren't taking new patients until July.

She's in pain constantly. I'm really mad and am going to call up pretending to be her with the full intention of getting an appointment for her. But I really need some advice on how to go about this. How can they be turning away is this allowed? She pays tax like everyone else and yet they've been messing her around for months!

Please help, any advice would be really appreciated!

Reply 1

Egypt

Tell Your friend to ring NHS direct and they should be able to tell you which local practices are accepting new patients at the moment.

Reply 2

Ayshizzle

Original post by PlanetTea

Many dental practices have emergency appointments available for patients that aren't registered with them- Tell her to call up the practices and ask if they have emergency appointments, not if they're taking on new patients.

Reply 3

Joinedup

The local primary care trust (pct) is the body your friend needs to speak to iirc.

Reply 4

heidigirl

If your friend is in real pain, then she can get an emergency dental appointment. This usually needs to be 'severe dental pain' though. So something that's just annoying but can wait probably won't be an emergency. Although if she's lasted a few months maybe it's not that bad. :dontknow:

What emergency dental services are available will depend on your local area; some areas have specific emergency dental clinics (which usually only take appointments on a day-by-day basis; i.e. you can only ring up in the morning for an appointment that day, you can't get ones in advance), or you can try local dentists for emergency appointments (it shouldn't matter if you're not registered with a specific dentist). You can contact your local PCT to find which dental services are available in a particular area. http://www.nhs.uk/ServiceDirectories/Pages/ServiceSearchAdditional.aspx?SearchType=PCT&ServiceType=Trust

If it's not that bad, the NHS website has a tool to find local services such as dentists and will usually give an indication as to which dentists are taking NHS patients at the moment. Dentists aren't like GP surgeries, you don't have to register at your nearest one, they don't really have 'practice areas', so if the one near you isn't taking NHS patients, you can try one a little further away. http://www.nhs.uk/servicedirectories/Pages/serviceSearch.aspx

Reply 5

SuperCat007

Don't phone up and pretend to be her. If it's that bad tell her to phone up the practise and ask for an emergency appointment, and not for a new patient appointment. Like doctors dentists have X-amount of emergency appointments for anyone.

Reply 6

Egypt

I work in an A&E department and unfortunately the advice given by our local dentists is that dental pain is not classed as an emergency, especially if it has been going on for months.

What your friend needs to do is find out which practices are taking on new patients and contact them tomorrow.

Reply 7

lonelykatana

To lessen the pain now get some TCP. It stinks, tastes like **** and stings like a mother - But along with painkillers (ibuprofen works far better than paracetamol. Tooth ache its self is usually caused by nerve inflammation. Ibuprofen or any other NSAID is a far better painkiller for this!) it works wonders.
Tell her to phone up every single practice in the area, there will be one with an emergency drop in day (its sundays in my area.)