Lunch & Learn workshops

On 11th August the QIiPT team held a lunchtime workshop to engage with dental team members. The aim of the workshop was to understand the frustrations and problems faced in general dental practice and identify ways the clinical effectiveness workstream could support practices.

There were common themes identified such as increased time taken for referrals and note writing, rising costs and increasing demands from patients. We introduced the concept of 15 seconds 30 minutes - a simple way for all members of the team to break down problems to help identify how a few extra seconds on a task now could save someone else 30 minutes or more later. In doing so, it reduces frustration and hopefully makes working life easier. The group came up with some great ideas such as making sure patient contact details were updated, charging equipment after using it so it was fully charged for the next user and using practice management software to indicate if patient labwork was back from the lab.

The QIiPT team have used the information gathered from this workshop and are producing a quality improvement toolkit for practices. This will be a step-by-step guide on how to carry out quality improvement projects in dental practice and will include dental examples of quality improvement projects. We are looking for practices to pilot this toolkit and give us feedback. If you are interested, please contact anne.coats@nhs.scot.