Community dental practice made more accessible

The community dental practice has been refurbished to create a more accessible space for patients who use wheelchairs.

Manx Care's Community Dental Service on Westmoreland Road in Douglas received a £33,000 grant to combine two rooms to better facilitate patients.

The overhaul includes the inclusion of a diaco ramp to tip patients in wheelchairs back during treatment and allows everything to be moved to increase ease of access.

Specialist in special care dentistry Beverley McClung said the vision was to make the service "more equitable for our patients".

The practice, which receives about 1,000 referrals a year, provides care for patients with complex needs including physical and learning disabilities and degenerative conditions.

Dr McClung said before the refurbishment, wheelchair users would need to wait for an appointment as the room would need to be set up.

As facilities in all the rooms previously had built-in equipment, staff were sometimes "having to balance on other pieces of equipment to treat a patient", she said.

However, the new facilities meant that specialist equipment could be easily set up at a "moment's notice" and keeping patients "safer" and allowing them to "feel well looked after", Dr McClung said.

It meant that the service was "placing the patient at the centre of care" instead of "fitting them around the dentistry", she added.

The funding was provided to the practice by Henry Bloom Noble Healthcare Trust after an approach by Dr McClung about the project.

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