[Report 1959] / School Medical Officer, Northamptonshire County Council.

  • Northamptonshire (England). County Council.
Date:
1959
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)

Credit: [Report 1959] / School Medical Officer, Northamptonshire County Council. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    5/48 (page 3)
    School Health Department, Guildhall Road, Northampton. April, 1960. To the Members of the Northamptonshire Education Committee. I have the honour to present the fifty-second Annual Report to the Education Committee. School Dental Service In my last year’s report I referred to the acute difficulties of recruiting dental surgeons. It was subsequently learned that there are now sufficient applicants for places in all the dental schools and the problem of the national shortage of dentists will be solved only when additional facilities for training are provided. Extent of Treatment under National Health Service In September the Committee enquired about the extent to which school children were being treated by dental surgeons under the National Health Service, and whether parents were generally aware that free dental treatment was available for their children through that agency. There is ample evidence of the shortage of dentists both in private practice and within the School Dental Service. For example, the McNair Report stated in 1956 : “ The majority of dentists in General Practice who appeared before us said they were overworked. We examined them closely to discover what this meant and found that in many parts of the country they received so many requests for treat¬ ment that their regular patients may have to wait a consider¬ able time before they can be seen, except in an emergency. New patients sometimes find it difficult to get a dentist to accept them.” The Report reaches the conclusion that : “ There is a great shortage of dentists and that it is both