Clinical Director, Public Dental Service

NHS Lanarkshire

In addition to being a Clinical Director I am on the GDC Specialist List for Special Care dentistry and have worked clinically in this field for over 20 years and continue to do so.

Patients with Additional Care Needs have a range of physical or cognitive conditions or indeed a combination of both and, as such it is imperative that nothing further disadvantages them from a health perspective. There is no doubt that being able to provide oral care for vulnerable patients is extremely important and I find working with this sector of the population to be both rewarding and challenging.

During my clinical work I regularly see the difficulties some patients in this group have when their oral health deteriorates in terms of both disease consequences and also barriers to treatment. These difficulties only increase as the patient's condition progresses unfortunately, which is evidence of the need for a resource targeting oral health improvement for these patients.

Optimising everyone's oral health is important but for those already compromised for one reason or another it is doubly so and therefore producing a resource like Open Wide which is tailored towards helping achieve and maintain good oral health is essential, which is why I became involved in the production of the resource.

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