Patients are often prompted to visit the dentist because they have been experiencing pain or discomfort. Recording the details of the pain (as described by the patient) in a structured, detailed fashion is an important aspect of clinical record keeping and can be invaluable in assisting the clinician to reach an appropriate diagnosis and treatment plan, and in monitoring treatment outcomes.

Busy clinical teams often say that there is never enough time to apply all the risk management advice they are given. This series distils the key messages from a specific area of risk to provide some practical tools that can make a real difference right away.

Undiagnosed and untreated periodontal disease is one of the fastest growing areas of litigation and complaints in dentistry.

In case after case, the question arises of what information a patient was given in advance of their treatment. Obviously, this is material to the quality of the consent obtained from the patient, and yet dentists, hygienists and therapists often find themselves unable to demonstrate with any certainty, exactly what the patient was told, when, and in what terms

New techniques, new materials and perhaps more importantly, a shift in treatment philosophies in recent years has led to a greater emphasis upon minimally interventive, preventive approaches to the management of the early carious lesion. In some key respects new technology has helped, and in other respects it has hindered, this process.

There are many moments in clinical dentistry when the most crucial aspect of case management is not what you do, but what arrangements you make to monitor the effectiveness of what you do.

There are many examples in clinical dentistry, of treatment which is largely dependent upon the level of co-operation from the patient, and/or the degree to which the patient follows the advice and recommendations of the clinical team.

Dentists communicate with their technicians (and vice versa) in a variety of ways, and on a variety of subjects. Yet in the experience of Dental Protection, many valuable opportunities to improve the quality of these communications seem to be missed. Although there has to have been some dialogue, there is often little or no tangible evidence that this was so.