News
Celebrating 150 years in style
Local councillor Paul Eadie cuts the ribbon at the official opening
‘Supermarket’ dentist opens
INNOVATION
Achievement. Anniversary sees practice take on new NHS patients
A
S tir ling practice is celebrating its ı50th anniver- sary with an
extension that will enable it to take on a further ı,000 new NHS patients in the next ı2 months. Work at the Platt &
Common Dental Practice, owned by husband and wife John and Jennifer Denham, included creating an extra surgery on the ground floor, putting in an LDU, disabled toilet facilities, new reception area, staff room and a dental laboratory with a full-time acrylic denture technician. The couple, who started
work as associates at Platt & Common in ı999, took over the Albert Place practice when the previous owner Douglas Herd passed away. To fund the purchase and undertake expansion work, they secured a European Investment Bank (EIB) loan and a Government-backed Enterprise Finance Guar- antee (EFG) loan from Bank of Scotland.
10 Scottish Dental magazine The expansion will take
the surgery total up to eight and allow John to continue his role as a VT trainer. Jennifer said: “Platt &
Common is the longest- established dental practice in Stirling, having started with Stirling’s first resi- dent dentist, Leon Platt, in ı86ı. The practice moved to Albert Place in ı964, but the Victorian building required restoration and modernisa- tion to bring it in line with current NHS guidelines. “We could see the need for
expansion, but we required financial backing to ensure the future of the practice and to make our ambitions a reality. “We approached Bank
of Scotland and got some really valuable help from its specialist healthcare team. Securing funding from the bank was also a straight- forward process, which is not what we had expected after all the talk in recent years about not being able to get finance. “When we recruited a
new dentist last August, we were able to start taking on about 20-30 new patients a week on the NHS, as well as expanding into new areas of work such as tooth whitening.”
The first NHS supermarket dental practice in the UK has been opened at the Tesco Extra store in Corstorphine. Owned and operated by Independent Dental Holdings (IDH), the practice is the first venture of its kind in Scotland following similar private partnerships in England. Sainsbury’s and Boots stores in Manchester and London have opened private dental practices, but this is the first NHS practice in a retail environment in Britain.
IDH will rent the space from Tesco, who built the shell next to their in-house opticians for IDH to fit out and equip. With 1,200 patients signed up before the practice opened its doors, IDH and Tesco are hoping that the accessibility and convenience of its location will see the patient list grow. The practice will open 8am to 8pm, Monday to Friday, 9am to 6pm on Saturdays and noon to 6pm on Sundays. It will be open every day apart from Christmas day. The dentists will be Glasgow graduate Fiona Marriott, Spaniard Jose Romero and Dundee graduate Maksad Al-Nakib.
Top north dental nurse named
An Inverness dental nurse has been named the SVQ Dental Nurse Candidate of the Year for the NHS north region. Amberley Crooks, who has secured a permanent position as a dental nurse in the Ness Bank Dental Practice, was one of only seven nominees picked out of a class of 42 trainees in the event hosted by NHS Education for Scotland (NES). The ceremony took place on 6 March at a presentation evening in Inverness. Amberley was one of six trainee dental nurses out of the 2010 consort chosen by NHS Highland for a two-year training contract.
Following a placement at the Town & County Hospital Nairn, she attended day-
release classes delivered by NES tutors at the Centre for Health Science Inverness. Her assessor Alison Macleod nomi- nated Amberley for the award, and said she was “an extremely good student and incredibly well organised”.
Hazel Carroll of Dental Direc- tory, who also hosts the event, picked the winner and Dr Isobel Madden, the assistant director, presented certificates.
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