Medical Emergencies
Home (domiciliary) visits
The Care Quality Commission and the General Dental Council have agreed the following advice for dental professionals undertaking domiciliary care.
Risk Assessment
The CQC expect dental practice teams to undertake a full risk assessment before carrying out treatment. This would include:
- any medical risks posed by the patients’ medical history
- how suitable a person’s home is to carry out treatment. (For example, nursing or care homes may have resuscitation equipment and emergency medicines).
Invasive dental treatment
It will be necessary to balance the risk between patients at the practice and those receiving care at home. For example, should a practice defibrillator be removed while patients are being treated at the practice? It may be better for domiciliary visits take place when other practitioners in a practice are not providing dental care.
It will sometimes be necessary to first visit a patient in their home, or care setting to assess the risks of providing care.
Transporting oxygen
The risk assessment may show that an oxygen cylinder is needed. If so, transport it safely in line with national recommendations. There are no specific regulations covering the carriage of small quantities of medical gases in small cylinders. However, some suppliers of medical oxygen recommend you carry a transport emergency card (TREM card). This gives information on how cylinders should be handled in an emergency.
Non-invasive dental treatment, which includes
- Dental examinations
- Oral health assessments
- Providing dentures.
For these services, dental teams are not expected to take the full range of resuscitation equipment on a home visit. This is in line with other health care professionals such as GPs. What equipment is taken depends on the risks identified in the risk assessment.
The practitioner would be expected take appropriate emergency drugs when undertaking domiciliary visits.
Contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0.