xfeelingthis
New member
Hi folks, dentist here. The reason PPE charge is so expensive is the PPE itself can be expensive and hard to source, times 2 for dentist and nurse, but also there’s the fact that after anything involving aerosols - air so even drying teeth for a check up - the surgery has to be left empty and then fully disinfected. Our fallow time is an hour, that can be more depending on the airflow in a surgery. So while it might be a 20 minute appointment for you in the chair, it’s really 1 hour 40 or so between donning the PPE, appointment, fallow time then full surgery disinfection It’s a total nightmare. I’m an NHS dentist so we’re a bit different but where we could previously see 20+ patients a day we’d now be lucky to see 6 if aerosols are involved. Dental practices are businesses and at the minute a lot of them are hugely struggling, so many having to let staff go and running the risk of bankruptcy, especially those that do majority private work. So the term “PPE charge” is maybe a bit misleading as it isn’t just the cost of the PPE itself that’s the problem. I wish the government would share this about a bit more readily rather than everyone assuming that dentists are trying to profiteer from the situation. Not to say there aren’t a few bad eggs as with everything but I know the vast majority are good dentists who aren’t trying to rip people off. They’re just trying to stay afloat.