Dental Protection and schülke were proud to sponsor a brand new award for 2013. The new ‘Dental Practice of the Year’ award aims to acknowledge the hard work and commitment that goes into being a great practice. However, it is the strong focus on risk management and professionalism that makes these awards different from so many others. Entries were assessed on the following criteria:
- Ethics
- Professionalism
- Record keeping
- Cross infection control
- Team working
- Consent
- Communication
- Health and safety
Dental Protection is thrilled to announce the Church Court Dental Practice in Dumfries as the first winner of the Practice of the Year award. In June 2009 DPL launched the DPL Xtra practice programme throughout the UK to provide risk management support for the whole of the dental team. We also opened our office in Edinburgh at around the same time to demonstrate our continuing commitment to health care professionals in Scotland. We are extremely pleased to now have over 600 dental practices in DPL Xtra and that our market share in Scotland has risen by 15% over the past 4 years. To have a DPL Xtra practice based in Scotland take the prize in our first Practice of the Year award is just the icing on the cake and reinforces our decisions to invest further in both these areas.
The prize of £1,500 was awarded to Church Court Dental Practice. The Practice Principal and his team made the trip down to London to collect their award at this year’s Premier Symposium held at The Shaw Theatre, Pullman St Pancras, London on Saturday 23 November.
Kevin Lewis, DPL’s Dental Director said, 'Thirteen years ago when we first discussed this collaborative venture between Dental Protection and Schulke neither of us could have imagined what a fixture it would become in the dental calendar. The awards have been part of the Premier Initiative from the very start and when we decided to change their format this year we were keen to make them equally relevant and meaningful and to retain the spirit of risk management and patient safety that has always been at the heart of Premier.
We have certainly achieved that and the particular attraction of this year’s winning entry in the Practice section of the awards, was the transformative effect on the practice culture that resulted from engaging the whole team in taking risk management and patient safety so seriously. We hope that their success will inspire others to follow a similar path and reap unexpected rewards as a result.'