The achievement marks a first for Derbyshire and comes as a reward for a series of ground-breaking schemes introduced at the practice.
Principal dentist Bhupinder Dawett, 41, who took over the business with his wife, Claire, in December, 2000, said, ‘We’re delighted to win the awards. We’re very keen on promoting dental health and prevention and these successes both will help us to do that. I used to work in a predominantly private practice and when we moved to Alfreton I wanted to get those standards and qualities and bring them here.
‘The Dental Practice was extensively modernised and new innovative equipment was installed. This has enabled us to greatly enhance our prevention methods. We started saliva testing which helps to identify risks and to improve patient care. From the test results we are able to give more tailored preventive advice to a patient.’
For help in interpreting the test results Bhupinder, who lives with his wife and two young children in Nottingham, linked up with consultant Prof Chris Deery from the University of Sheffield, School of Dentistry, and Paul Leighton and Holly Blake from the University of Nottingham.
‘We got together and made up a protocol for ways of interpreting the data we collected from the saliva testing that is carried out by our oral health educator. We put in for the Colgate DCP Research Award for research conducted by Dental Care Professionals (DCP), which can be applied for by anyone on the professional register bar dentists. Four weeks later we heard Lisa Pope, our oral health educator who has been with us since 2001 and who carries out the saliva tests had won the award. We were very surprised and honoured to have won such an award.
‘I then applied for an NIHR In-practice Fellowship Award. The fellowships are awarded to doctors and dentists who have demonstrated the potential to become research leaders in their particular field and whose research is people or patient-focussed and relevant to the NHS.
‘The awards are very competitive. I later heard the awarding panel had recommended me. I was thrilled as I was one of only three dentists in the country to win in 2010 and it’s the first time a dentist in Derbyshire County PCT has achieved such an award.’
Meanwhile, the practice, which has 12 staff, including four dentists, and treats almost all of its patients under the NHS, produced plans to carry out an outreach programme to schools for which it has now received the 2010 British Society for General Dental Surgery Scholarship Award for research in primary care.
Bhupinder said, ‘This is again part of our prevention programme. We’ve got children in school with tooth decay and the question is how we get them, some who’ve probably never seen a dentist, into a dental practice. Our health educators will be going into schools to talk with the children about dental care. They’ll make it fun with quizzes and interactive teaching and there will be a pack for their parents.
‘Surveys estimate a very significant proportion of the population does not attend the dentist regularly. The first thing we’re going to do is find out how many children and their parents have not seen a dentist and how we can engage them. We need to look at the way they think and alleviate any fears they might have.’