Dec 18, 2020

In this month’s blog: Emergency dentist in Salisbury over Christmas and an intro to new staff member news.

What a year. Definitely up there with the year we got married and when our kids were born as one not to forget... for many reasons. We truly hope next year is better for all of you - our Gentle Dental family. TG we are not trying to figure out how to work within the rules to see all of you for Christmas. However, we thought we couldn’t let the season pass without letting you all catch a glimpse of us letting our hair down. Unfortunately, we could only get 5 elves at a time so you get the joy of seeing myself and Rob live it up...  not once but twice!  And a look at Robs moves that the video was modelled on!!!!

We also had Christmas jumper day this week or in Robs case, Christmas shirt day.


As you may have noticed we have been using locum and agency dental nurses since Shilpa left last January. We have finally managed to take the time to employ our own staff. We have employed one trainee and one qualified nurse.

Dental Nurse Jess

Jess started with us 2 weeks ago. Her background is in hospitality so her customer service skills are top notch making it much simpler for us to help with her dental nurse training.


Dental nurse Liz

Liz will be joining us as a nurse in January. She trained as a nurse many hears ago but has been working in the beauty industry for the last 20 years. This means she is up to date on all of the cross-infection control necessary within a treatment room and just needs to brush up on the dentistry element of her role.


Kat at Gentle Dental

Kat is a locum nurse who has been with us off and on over the last 5 years. She is staying on with us 2 days per week to help out with    training. We hope they will all become as familiar to you as the rest of our fabulous team.

You may have noticed that the title and first line of this blog is a little different than usual. I hope you will forgive me but while keeping the blogs personal to our current clients I am also exploring how to make them more search engine friendly so that they pop up when a search is made. It will not change the content simply the title and perhaps a word or two in the article.


 

Christmas opening times 

As we said before we are closed from 1pm on Wednesday 23rd December until Monday 11th January. The longer closure is to ensure we have 14 days clear after any mingling with family over Christmas and to the best of our ability ensure we keep everyone   safe. However, we are totally contactable should any of you have a problem or need advice over this time. Just call Rob on   07896851563 or call the practice on the normal number for details on how to contact Rob should the need arise. From January 4th I   will be monitoring messages and emails so feel free to contact us with any non-emergency queries during that week.

Emergency dentist

This is a link to our 'what to do in a difficult dental situation' advice sheet  created and shared during the initial lockdown. Rob looks a little different now as he has had to lose the beard - not allowed with FFP2/FFP3 masks as they affect the fit. Not that you’d notice with all the PPE we have to wear.

Many thanks for all of your patience with the new systems over the last months. We are introducing a different system for the electronic paperwork we need you to complete before your visit so watch your inbox. Hopefully it will make it easier for you. Instead of DocuSign most of it will be from Gentle Dental with our usual branding. Some paperwork will still need to be done through DocuSign but the team will let you know what to look out for each time.

Urgent dentist phone call

We are finding our new system of calling a month in advance to book your hygiene appointment quite labour intensive as we don’t manage to contact many of you during the day. So we have set Patricia up to work remotely and she is going to do her calls in the early evening and on a Saturday morning. Don’t be surprise to see a call from Gentle Dental at an unusual time.

We are incredibly fortunate in that we are very busy currently and this is all thanks to you our amazing clients. Between you all you have referred xx friends and family members to us in the last 12 months. And the majority of clients who have found us through a google search (other search engines are available!) have been swayed by the amazing review you have all given us. We cannot thank you enough for your support.

As you may be aware, we make a £10 charity donation for each personal referral received and we have decided as the reviews are more or less a personal recommendation to make a £10 donation when people mention this as the reason they chose us. Since Jan 1st 2020 we have had 106 new clients through our doors.  So we will be donating £1060 to our chosen charity.

Charity

In previous years we have supported Salisbury Hospice and Operation Smile UK - Robs Ghana trip. We were deciding what charity to support this year when lockdown happened so the decision was never finalised. We have had a discussion as a team and the reality of the situation regarding homelessness many are facing with the large number of redundancies recently was what we felt we would like to support. We therefore have decided to support Salisbury Trust for the Homeless, in retrospect for 2020 and to continue this support through 2021. We hope this meets with your approval.

 

It simply remains for us to wish you all a Happy and Safe Christmas and a New Year that is better for all.

Keep well and safe.

Niamh, Rob and the Gentle Dental team.

Gentle Dental Blog