Latest / Early Edition with Ryan Bridge / Samuel Carrington: Otago University dentistry Senior Lecturer on growing waitlist for child dental surgery

Transcript

Samuel Carrington: Otago University dentistry Senior Lecturer on growing waitlist for child dental surgery · Early Edition with Ryan Bridge

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Over half of children on the dental surgery weight list
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: have been waiting more than four months. That's three thousand
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: kids waiting more than one hundred and twenty days health
• 0:07
  Speaker 1: in zed data. They are apparently in pain, some of them.
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: There's some complex issues. Samuel Carrington, Faculty of Dentistry at Otago.
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  Speaker 2: You need good morning, Good morning, Ryan, how are you good?
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  Speaker 1: Thank you? What are you going to do to get
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  Speaker 1: on the list.
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: Right? Well, by the time timebod, if you reach hospital care,
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  Speaker 2: they usually are quite in a lot of significant pain
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  Speaker 2: and have multiple infected or edits teeth. So many of
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  Speaker 2: these so many need several extractions and in some cases
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  Speaker 2: for dental clearances under general So the level of disease
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  Speaker 2: is not about poor oral hygien alone. It's actually about
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  Speaker 2: death issues like poverty and nutrition, lack of early access
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  Speaker 2: to the community oral health service. And if we had
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  Speaker 2: a system that primarily focus on prevention, these children would
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  Speaker 2: be treated much earlier with simpler and less traumatic procedures.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: But right now their hospital dentist surgery is often the
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  Speaker 2: end result of a systemic failure.
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  Speaker 1: So just stop feeding them coca cola.
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  Speaker 2: Well that's one part of it. But yeah, like I said,
• 1:00
  Speaker 2: it's a systemic issue. Unfortunately, our community Orehalse service is
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  Speaker 2: under resource, understaff, and this all leads to children waiting
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  Speaker 2: on the list and leading hospital level care.
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  Speaker 1: So when they're on the list, are they guaranteed to
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  Speaker 1: be in pain? Like for those who are waiting four months,
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  Speaker 1: presumably you would get the extreme cases out of the
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  Speaker 1: way first. So those who are waiting more than form
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  Speaker 1: I mean, are their kids out there literally every day
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  Speaker 1: in pain waiting for a dental surgery more than four months?
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  Speaker 2: Unfortunately there are And if you think about the weight issues,
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  Speaker 2: so children in pain, you know they can't do things
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  Speaker 2: like concentrate in school, They struggle to eat, they lose
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  Speaker 2: a lot of sleeve. They often go through multiple appointments
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  Speaker 2: to the community Orehalse Service and even to private practices
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  Speaker 2: in order to get antibiotics to kind of alleviate that pain.
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  Speaker 2: But what happens is it affects their development and their
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  Speaker 2: ability to thrive. And it also it's noted impacting the child,
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  Speaker 2: it's also impacting on the family, so that family carries
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  Speaker 2: a huge emotional and financial burden. It's a terrible to
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  Speaker 2: take time off work. Now it's a trope Travelt to appointment.
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  Speaker 1: It's terrible. Nobody wants that. So what this backlog was
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  Speaker 1: caused by the lockdowns?
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  Speaker 2: Was it?
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  Speaker 1: So we locked down then we had couldn't do any
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  Speaker 1: of the surge. Reason then that the backlog we haven't
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  Speaker 1: caught up.
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  Speaker 2: That's correct, Yeah, okay, but it's also an outcome of
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  Speaker 2: the system itself. So children were being pushed back for
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  Speaker 2: their exams, their dental tickeay got worse, the list got bigger,
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  Speaker 2: and then factor Adam was the fact that we were
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  Speaker 2: having staff shortages. People were leaving, they were retiring. We
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  Speaker 2: were having new graduates graduate from both universities Otago and
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  Speaker 2: aut and a lot of them were going to Australia.
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  Speaker 1: Are they still going there?
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  Speaker 2: Absolutely? I also worked at the dental school and I
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  Speaker 2: think about our graduating class last year, I'd say about
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  Speaker 2: a quarter of them went over to Australia.
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  Speaker 1: What would it normally be, Well.
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  Speaker 2: The public system actually cries out for a lot of
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  Speaker 2: our graduates. We had around about one hundred and forty
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  Speaker 2: oral health therapist graduate year. But last year it was
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  Speaker 2: the first time in my ten years of looking at
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  Speaker 2: the university that I've seen a big chunk of our
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  Speaker 2: graduates actually go to Australia because they couldn't find jobs here.
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  Speaker 1: Sam, appreciate your time, Sam Carrington, a senior lecture off
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  Speaker 1: Faculty of Dentistry at the University of Otago. I mean
• 3:19
  Speaker 1: joined the Q Who Isn't Leaving?
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  Speaker 2: I suppose?
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  Speaker 1: For more from early edition with Ryan Bridge.
• 3:24
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  Speaker 2: or follow the podcast on iHeartRadio.