One woman in her 30s, Boyka, told the researchers: “We don’t have a dentist. It’s crazy. For us, it’s, like, impossible! In Ukraine the dentist industry is huge, you know, everywhere, and because it’s everywhere you just go and it’s like £10, £8, and you can clean it, whiten it like [a] Hollywood smile!
Some British families who have taken in Ukrainian refugees have noted that their guests organise dental appointments during their visits home.
The traditional “british teeth” was the UK’s dental industry focussing on healthy rather than pretty.
Nowadays, it’s caused by underfunded patient slots at dentists.
You can find a private dentist pretty easily, but it’s quite hard to get taken on as an NHS patient (which means when you need treatment for something, you’re not in the capped NHS bands). Which is especially bad if you’re eligible for completely free treatment, as you’re blocked by available dentists.
The dentists are generally given funding (or access to funding) for a set amount of NHS patients to make up the difference between NHS capped costs and their true costs. And unfortunately, there often aren’t enough slots.
I was lucky with my current dentist that they happened to have slots when I signed up. And a few years later, they let me know when slots were opening so I could add the rest of the household.
I have some dental trauma and that combined with autism meant I was able to push to go to the community special access dentist (or whatever it’s called), but I had to really push for that. I wouldn’t have been able to find a dentist otherwise