Dental Tribune United Kingdom Edition

September 3-9, 201212 CQC United Kingdom Edition be displayed somewhere for the patients to see it easily, for ex- ample in the waiting room. The incidents raised by pa- tients, their concerns and what their actual complaint is should be logged, monitored and re- sponded to within the normal requirements set out in your policy. The clinician focus There are two aspects to the clinician’s duty. One to protect the patient from abuse and sec- ondly to heed any warning signs that may be evident from the pa- tient of abuse. This could be, in the form of emotional or physi- cal abuse etc. If you suspect any of the dentists/hygienists to be in the direct line of abusing the pa- tient, then this is a breach of our duty and the correct measures should be followed by staff in order to protect the patient. See Tip 3 on whistle-blowing. The staff focus TIP 2 - All clinical staff should have and enhanced CRB check done All members of the clinical team should have an enhanced CRB check done. The only time you may not want to, perhaps, is for a receptionist for whom you may want to carry out a compre- hensive risk assessment. TIP 3 - have a whistle-blowing policy in place The practice staff should have the confidence to report con- cerns without worrying about the consequences and they should know their rights un- der The Public Disclosure Act 1998 for whistle blowing. These concerns may be in the form of abuse (verbal, physical etc). The staff should feel that they can disclose something and are protected when doing so. The disclosure should be made to the appropriate body like the practice manager, partner, PCT or the health and safety execu- tive. The practice management fo- cus All members of our dental team should have a personal responsibility for safeguarding patients. The staff should un- derstand the signs of abuse and know who to go to, if they have any concerns. Tip 4 - have a vulnerable adult’s policy and staff train- ing on it This is mostly where a patient is 18 years of age or over and they are not able to look after them- selves or protect themselves from harm or being exploited. This can include the elderly, people with mental illnesses, physical disabilities etc. It is useful to have a policy which clearly outlines the pro- cedures for staff members to follow and states their respon- sibilities to the patients. It is always useful to have the local contacts for adult safeguarding board near you, on the policy. Staff should be regularly trained on this aspect and they should all be aware of what to do if they suspected miscon- duct. A training log is useful to show compliance in this area. Tip 5 - have a child protection policy and staff training The policy could have things such as: safe guard children safeguard children protection - tion about concerns with other agencies who need to know - ate procedures for staff recruit- ment and selection management to supervision, support and training It may be useful to have a nominated lead for safeguard- ing issues within the practice so that all staff and patients know who to raise a concern with. Extra tip - restraints in dental practice Restraints policies are rare in dentistry but some CQC inspec- tors have been asking for them. There are very few situations in dentistry where restraints would ever be appropriate. Ex- amples Include: - tients’ hand, to reassure them, if they are especially fearful of local anaesthetic injections. such an action would be to re- assure the patient, there is the possibility that the patient may want to grab the dentists hand whilst they are giving the injec- tion resulting in possible dam- age to themselves or others. The Mental Capacity act 2005 of doing this could be construed as restraint and team members should be confident to answer this question. of a very nervous patient who wanted to grab the dentists hand whilst they were using the drill The act requires two condi- tions to be satisfied if, ever you or your staff used the restraint: restraint is absolutely necessary to prevent the person coming to harm reasonable and in proportion to the potential harm. As with all management ar- eas, these are not the only poli- cies relating to this subject. You may want to have other policies - man rights policy, a policy on aggression and violence etc. - ings and communicating with your staff will help to achieve continuity of practice proce- dures and policies. Audits too are a way of improving our ser- vices to patients and regular audits carried out may help to demonstrate our compliance to CQC. There are many ways to show your compliance of this outcome and the tips above are only a few of them. The method of compliance for each practice will be individual to that prac- tice. DT Enrol today! Call for details Limited places available! TR213860 page 11DT ‘It is useful to have a policy which clearly outlines the procedures for staff members to follow and states their responsibilities to the patients’ About the author Dr Shilla Talati is a partner MD of Dental Perfec- tion and has a special interest in the managing side of her dental practice. She also writes several arti- cles on compliance and is also involved with medico-legal aspects of patient care. To contact Shilla please email her on shillata- lati@yahoo.co.uk What is your commitment to safeguarding children?