Patient Update

Many years ago, as a developing dentist and clinician, I made friends with a very senior dentist who practised in Windsor and was actually quite famous in the world of dentistry.

David was a genius, a brilliant clinician who ran his own clinic in Windsor after travelling from the United States to work in the United Kingdom.

Within his clinic (more than ten years ago), he had set up a specialist, private Children's service, which was revolutionary, particularly in the United Kingdom.

At that stage, the thought of anyone paying for their children to access dentistry in the United Kingdom was, to be honest, abhorrent, as people expected children always to be treated under national health service arrangements - how things have moved on in the world in the past 10 to 15 years.

At that stage, though, David was developing some wonderful and innovative concepts around Children's dentistry, including having drop-in check-up sessions for Children who could come during the school holidays when their parents had time off. 

He had unscheduled drop-in sessions at his clinic that were developing together with people dressed up in fancy dress to make it more fun and engaging for the Children to come to the dentist.

He was trying to break the mould of what it means for a young person to see a healthcare professional to have their teeth examined.

Sadly, for any number of reasons, David's project didn't work as well as he would have liked, but I was amazed by that; I think it didn't work because it was ahead of its time.

For that reason, one of the things we wanted to do when we were setting up the Total Care Club at The Campbell Clinic for our general dental service was to make it entirely different from what happens everywhere else.

Going to the dentist to have your teeth checked and your oral health checked is very important. We have the opportunity to see things that no one else can see and to diagnose things that no one else can diagnose. However, we should also make it as accessible as possible. We should try to teach our children that going to the dentist is a lifetime activity and there's nothing to be scared of.

Making it fun, engaging, and empathic for young people to go to the dentist means that they will develop a habit of brilliant oral health care for the rest of their lives, which will pay off year after year.

With that in mind, we have developed our drop-in check-up service at the Total Care Club, tipping our hat to David in Windsor and what he did over a decade ago.

So, on the 30th of October, our Total Care Club Members will have the opportunity to attend a drop-in session, and some of our team will be dressed up as superheroes just to make it a bit more fun and a bit more engaging for the young people who are coming.

To be honest, we love the whole superhero thing at The Campbell Clinic as a team. We love the idea of who we would be if we were superheroes.

And so, Shaun, our general dental clinician, and some of the team will be dressed up and ready to look after our young patients as they come through the doors at a time that suits them in the holidays, hopefully with less stress, with more time to be spent on them, more care, more compassion, more empathy.

If you would like to be part of this, there is a link here to learn more about it. You will get priority booking on these sessions if you're already a Total Care Club Member. If you're not, there are still complimentary check-ups for children available. Click here to let us know if you'd like to come.

I am delighted with the response that we've had to the launch of our Total Care Club.

In the short space of time since we started to talk about this in June we already have more patients in care for general dentistry than The Campbell Clinic has ever had before, and this will continue until we reach our ceiling. 

We have set an exact ceiling at which we will stop accepting patients for the Total Care Club. We want to maintain the highest level of quality, and we understand we cannot do that with an unlimited number of people.

Therefore, if this is something that you're interested in; entering into an innovative, special, different general dental service which provides total care for you and your family with lots of developing innovative features, including (but not exclusively themed Children's check-up drop-in sessions) then get in touch with us and let us know if you'd like us to have a chat with you about how this can benefit you and your family and enhance their overall health care and their future.

More and more innovative things to do with The Total Care Club will be released over the coming months and we will continue to look after people in this service better than they have been looked after in dentistry before.

We are working tirelessly to develop this and have been delighted with the response that we've had so far.

On the subject of dressing up, though, we will be hosting our charity ball for the seventh time this year on November 23rd.

The theme is Christmas fancy dress, and it's a chance for us and our friends and colleagues in dentistry and in the wider community to get together and continue to raise money for our social legacy projects. Over the last ten years, we have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds to help people less fortunate than us.

We support five main charities in relation to our social legacy project, but today, I'd just like to give you a short view of what we're doing in Tanzania to help a British-based charity called Bridge2Aid to improve the lives of people who have limited or no access to dentistry or pain relief for dental problems.

In Tanzania, there are only a handful of qualified dentists for tens of millions of people, and so we now pay the entire wages for three days per week of a clinician in the capital of Tanzania who is running the Bridge2Aid service and expanding access to pain relief, dental extractions and basic dental care to a whole company.

We're lucky that we get updates from Dr Chicco by video as often as he can, and he's just taken delivery of two sets of Campbell Clinic Scrubs (He really is one of the team). 

The website for Bridge2Aid is here. If you would like to help them improve the lives of people who have limited or no access to dentistry (imagine one of your Children had a toothache; what would you do?). 

If you want to know any more about our social legacy projects, our social legacy website is here.

As always, thank you so much for reading this and for keeping in touch.

If you have any questions, reply to this email, and we will contact you! 

Best wishes, and see you soon, Colin.