Dentistry, also known as dental medicine and oral medicine, is the branch of medicine focused on the teeth, gums, and mouth. It consists of the study, diagnosis, prevention, management, and treatment of diseases, disorders, and conditions of the mouth, most commonly focused on dentition as well as the oral mucosa. Dentistry may also encompass other aspects of the craniofacial complex including the temporomandibular joint. The practitioner is called a dentist.
The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh (RCSEd) is a professional organisation of surgeons. The RCSEd has five faculties, covering a broad spectrum of surgical, dental, and other medical and healthcare specialities. Its main campus is located on Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, centred around the 18th century Surgeons' Hall. The campus includes Surgeons' Hall Museums, a medical and surgical library, a skills laboratory, a symposium hall, administrative offices and a hotel. A second UK office was opened in Birmingham in 2014 and an international office opened in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in 2018.
Professor Sir Bruce Edward Keogh, KBE, FMedSci, FRCS, FRCP is a Rhodesian-born British surgeon who specialises in cardiac surgery. He was medical director of the National Health Service in England from 2007 and national medical director of the NHS Commissioning Board from 2013 until his retirement early in 2018. He is chair of Birmingham Women's and Children's NHS Foundation Trust and chairman of The Scar Free Foundation.
NHS Scotland, sometimes styled NHSScotland, is the publicly–funded healthcare system in Scotland and one of the four systems that make up the National Health Service in the United Kingdom. It operates 14 territorial NHS boards across Scotland, supported by seven special non-geographic health boards, and Public Health Scotland.
A patient safety organization (PSO) is a group, institution, or association that improves medical care by reducing medical errors. Common functions of patient safety organizations are data collection, analysis, reporting, education, funding, and advocacy. A PSO differs from a Federally designed Patient Safety Organization (PSO), which provides health care providers in the U.S. privilege and confidentiality protections for efforts to improve patient safety and the quality of patient care delivery
Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry (PCMD) was a medical and dental school in England, run in partnership with the University of Exeter, the University of Plymouth and the NHS in Devon and Cornwall. In January 2013 the school began disaggregation to form Plymouth University Peninsula Schools of Medicine and Dentistry and the University of Exeter Medical School.
The Health and Social Care Directorates are a group of directorates of the Scottish Government. They are responsible for NHS Scotland, as well as policies on the development and implementation of health and social care.
Dental Public Health (DPH) is a para-clinical specialty of dentistry that deals with the prevention of oral disease and promotion of oral health. Dental public health is involved in the assessment of key dental health needs and coming up with effective solutions to improve the dental health of populations rather than individuals.
The National Health Service (NHS) is the publicly funded healthcare system in England, and one of the four National Health Service systems in the United Kingdom. It is the second largest single-payer healthcare system in the world after the Brazilian Sistema Único de Saúde. Primarily funded by the government from general taxation, and overseen by the Department of Health and Social Care, the NHS provides healthcare to all legal English residents and residents from other regions of the UK, with most services free at the point of use for most people. The NHS also conducts research through the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR).
Dental fear, or dentophobia, is a normal emotional reaction to one or more specific threatening stimuli in the dental situation. However, dental anxiety is indicative of a state of apprehension that something dreadful is going to happen in relation to dental treatment, and it is usually coupled with a sense of losing control. Similarly, dental phobia denotes a severe type of dental anxiety, and is characterised by marked and persistent anxiety in relation to either clearly discernible situations or objects or to the dental setting in general. The term ‘dental fear and anxiety’ (DFA) is often used to refer to strong negative feelings associated with dental treatment among children, adolescents and adults, whether or not the criteria for a diagnosis of dental phobia are met. Dental phobia can include fear of dental procedures, dental environment or setting, fear of dental instruments or fear of the dentist as a person. People with dental phobia often avoid the dentist and neglect oral health, which may lead to painful dental problems and ultimately force a visit to the dentist. The emergency nature of this appointment may serve to worsen the phobia. This phenomenon may also be called the cycle of dental fear. Dental anxiety typically starts in childhood. There is the potential for this to place strains on relationships and negatively impact on employment.
Evidence-based dentistry (EBD) is the dental part of the more general movement toward evidence-based medicine and other evidence-based practices. The pervasive access to information on the internet includes different aspects of dentistry for both the dentists and patients. This has created a need to ensure that evidence referenced to are valid, reliable and of good quality.
The American Dental Society of Anesthesiology (ADSA) is an American professional association established in 1953 and based in Chicago.
Healthcare Improvement Scotland (HIS) is the national healthcare improvement organisation for Scotland. It is a public body which is part of the Scottish National Health Service, created in April 2011.
Dentistry provided by the National Health Service in the United Kingdom is supposed to ensure that dental treatment is available to the whole population. Most dentistry is provided by private practitioners, most of whom also provide, on a commercial basis, services which the NHS does not provide, largely cosmetic. Most adult patients have to pay some NHS charges, although these are often significantly cheaper than the cost of private dentistry. The majority of people choose NHS dental care rather than private care: as of 2005, the national average proportion of people forced to use private care was 23%. NHS dentistry is not always available and is not managed in the way that other NHS services are managed.
The Scottish Patient Safety Programme (SPSP) is national initiative to improve the reliability of healthcare and reduce the different types of harm that can be associated. The programme is co-ordinated by Healthcare Improvement Scotland and is the first example of a country introducing a national patient safety programme across the whole healthcare system. From an initial focus on acute hospitals, the SPSP now includes safety improvement programmes including SPSP Primary care, SPSP Medicines, Maternity and Children Quality Improvement Collaborative (MCQIC) and Mental Health.
The National Confidential Enquiry into Patient Outcome and Death (NCEPOD) is a registered charity based in London, with Dr Marisa Mason as the Chief Executive and Ian Martin as the Chair of the Trustees. The organisation started from a pilot study of mortality associated with anaesthesia in five regions in England, Wales and Scotland published in 1982. A joint venture was established between surgery and anaesthesia, named the Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths. It became the National Confidential Enquiry into Perioperative Deaths (NCEPOD) in 1988 and published its first report in 1990. It now covers all specialities and covers all outcomes as well as deaths.
Inhalation sedation is a form of conscious sedation where an inhaled drug should:
- Depress the central nervous system (CNS) to an extent that surgeons can operate with minimal physiological and psychological stress to the patient
- Modify the patient's state of mind such that communication is maintained and the patient can respond to verbal command
- Carry a margin of safety wide enough to render the unintended loss of consciousness and loss of protective reflexes unlikely.
The Nursing & Health Care School, University of Glasgow, is a speciality area within the School of Medicine, Dentistry and Nursing in Glasgow, Scotland. The School has offered a degree course in Nursing since 1977, introduced under the Dean of the Faculty of Medicine at the time, Professor Edward McGirr.
Paul Coulthard, BDS, MFGDP(UK), MDS, FDSRCS(Eng), FDSRCS(OS), PhD, FDSRCPS(Glas), FFDTRCS(Ed), FDSRCS(Ed), FCGDent is a British Academic, Surgeon and Scientist.
