This is Care Opinion [siteRegion]. Did you want Care Opinion [usersRegionBasedOnIP]?
Care Opinion

Trying to book an appointment

Posted By YoungBob

"Trying to book an appointment"

About: Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust

(as the patient),

I broke a tooth over the weekend and needed to see a dentist - something I have a strong aversion to, perhaps even a phobia, so am not registered with one. But as pain was an issue it needed seeing to. I found the NHS emergency service at Shrewsbury Dental Clinic and called them mid morning only to be told that they were full for the day and they only hand out appointments at 9. 00 am! This is not what it shows on the website information - that shows that they are open from 9. 00am to 5. 00pm. Now I have to wait another day before phoning and hope I'm first in the phone queue, which makes it a bit of a lottery.

More about:
Do you have a similar story to tell? Tell your story & make a difference ››

Responses

Response from Soma Moulik, PALS/FOI/Complaints Manager, Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust 8 years ago
Soma Moulik
PALS/FOI/Complaints Manager,
Shropshire Community Health NHS Trust

Submitted on 17/11/2015 at 10:33
Published on Care Opinion at 11:47

Thank you for taking the time to post your comment about our emergency dental service. Please accept my apologies for the delay in replying to your post which was due to some technical problems that we were experiencing.

I am sorry to hear that our service fell short of your expectation and that the information on booking and availability was not explicit on our web page. We provide a whole range of specialist services, such as special care dentistry, domiciliary service (home visits) for patients in the community, treatment under general anaesthetic, intravenous sedation and relative analgesia alongside emergency dental service for patients who require urgent dental treatment, for example, they are in pain, have severe tooth ache or dental trauma.

You will appreciate that we have a limited number of slots available daily for emergency patients which gets filled up very quickly at the start of the day, leaving limited availability for patients who make contact with the service later. It is therefore advisable that patients make contact with the service as early as possible. However, I appreciate that we need to make this clear on our webpage which I will discuss with the Service Manager and will feedback again with the outcome.

Once again, I am sorry that you had to wait for a day to access our emergency dental service whilst being in pain. Hope you were able to get an appointment the following day. Your feedback is really important to us as it not only helps us to continue remain motivated but also guides us to make improvements in future. Thank you for taking the effort to post your comments on the service that you received. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you want to discuss anything in future.

Kind regards

Soma

Telephone: 0800 032 1107 or 01743 277689

  • {{helpful}} {{helpful == 1 ? "person thinks" : "people think"}} this response is helpful
Opinions
Next Response j
Previous Response k