NHS Dentistry Watch: Do It Yourself Extraction
The United Kingdon’s socialized National Health Service gets the Dental Moron of the Day award.
Prestontoday.net has An unpleasant tooth.
A desperate grandfather tore a rotten tooth out of his own mouth with a pair of pliers after failing to get an appointment at his dental surgery.
Peter Atkinson was in so much agony he drank half a bottle of whisky to numb the pain before wrenching out the molar in his garden shed.
The 62-year-old businessman had tried repeatedly to get an appointment at his dentist with no luck … and when he asked for the emergency dentist’s number he was told it would not be given out until the surgery closed.
But he says his toothache was intolerable. He could not take the pain and in desperation dug out his toolbox. Today he criticised the chronic shortage of NHS dental appointments.
He said: “I was in a lot of pain and couldn’t eat, so I rang up my local dentist. He is a good guy, but he is snowed under and said I would have to wait until September 20 to be seen. I couldn’t manage with paracetamols.
“When I rang again the receptionist and she said she couldn’t do anything for me and that I would have to wait. I was in agony and told my wife Barbara I couldn’t cope with it. She was horrified when I told her my intentions. She begged me not to tear it out and said she would ring the emergency dentist.”
But the couple, who live on Lavender Way, Preesall, were told the staff were not allowed to give out the emergency dentist’s number until they had closed, because it is an out-of-hours service.
Peter, who runs a toy shop in Knott End, said: “I drank half a bottle of whisky and went down to my shed. I felt no pain at all and it barely bled. The tooth had worn away so much it was like a shark’s tooth.”
What a bureaucratic nightmare.
Couldn’t the local dentist make room for an emergency appointment or was it that the patient was on the National Health Service (NHS) and he would be paid whether he sees him or not or paid less?
There seem to be a good number of these type of horror stories about the NHS coming out of Britain lately.
Technorati Tags: dentist, dentistry, dental, tooth, NHS, National Health Service
5 Comments
Pingback:
jeff marsden Phd
hello.
i must respond to the above posts and say that 99% of the uk has a dentist.
the story was accurate in that it told a story but the man did not wait for the surgery to close due to dental pain but he may have seen the local dentist if he paid privatly and many dentists do do private work and a local emergency dentist will have removed the mans tooth later that day if he had waited and this man may have wanted to go privat if this man had paid for the work to be done it (the tooth)will have been removed.
We in the uk have a national health servics and it is not the best in the world but in the united states one third of americans to date do not have any health insurance yet can not turn to a national health servis in this day and age i found that thought provoking indeed.
To close this post we all must not dwell on the bad things as many good things do not get reported each day…thank you for reading this post.
jeff marsden Phd
SERVICE…NOT SERVICS…..IT WAS A TYPO…..SORRY
Flap
Jeff,
Thanks for commenting.
In the United States there is NO universal health care coverage for dentistry. Our private system in concert with the state and federal governments do provide funding, facilities and dental staff to provide routine and emergency dental services to everyone in need, especially children.
The private system in the United States is the direction of British dentistry. A combination of private investment, insurance schemes, employer financial participation and some government support seems to be the best combination.
A socialized government controlled and financed system of universal dental care does not appear to be a viable healthcare delivery model. Lines to sign up for a dentist, the government recruiting dentists from other countries to compete with their own countryman dentists and horror stories like this are certainly examples of a “failed” system.
Your thoughts?
Pingback: