Burpham Dental Care is a dental practice providing NHS and private treatment for both adults and children. The practice is based in a converted residential premises in Guildford, a town situated in Surrey. The practice has an arrangement whereby the two practice owners each have an individual NHS contract with two dentists working under each contract holder. The governance arrangements for the practice consisted of several individual responsibilities and other areas where there is joint responsibility for governance systems, processes and protocols.

The practice has four dental treatment rooms, two on the ground floor and two on the first floor. Each of the practice owners has two treatment rooms, one on each floor. This enables each contract holder to offer treatment on the ground floor for those patients with limited mobility or who cannot manage the stairs to the first-floor treatment rooms. Decontamination of dental instruments is carried out in each treatment room.

This practice owner employs two dentists, two trainee dental nurses and two shared receptionists.

The practice’s opening hours are 8am to 5.30pm from Monday to Friday.

There are arrangements in place to ensure patients receive urgent medical assistance when the practice is closed. This is provided by an out-of-hours service.

The practice owner is the registered manager for this registration. A registered manager is a person who is registered with the Care Quality Commission (CQC) to manage the service. Like registered providers, they are ‘registered persons’. Registered persons have legal responsibility for meeting the requirements in the Health and Social Care Act 2008 and associated Regulations about how the practice is run.

Before the inspection we sent Care Quality Commission (CQC) comments cards to the practice for patients to complete to tell us about their experience of the practice. We collected 48 completed cards. All the comments from patients were positive about the care they received from the practice.

Our key findings were:

• We found that the practice ethos was to provide patient centred dental care in a relaxed and friendly environment.

• Leadership was provided by the practice owner.

• Staff had been trained to handle emergencies and appropriate medicines and life-saving equipment was readily available in accordance with current guidelines.

• The practice appeared clean and well maintained.

• There was appropriate equipment for staff to undertake their duties, and equipment was well maintained.

• Infection control procedures followed published guidance.

• The practice owner acted as the safeguarding lead with effective processes in place for safeguarding adults and children living in vulnerable circumstances.

• There was a process in place for the reporting and shared learning when untoward incidents occurred in the practice.

• Dentists provided dental care in accordance with current professional and National Institute for Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines.

• The service was aware of the needs of the local population and took these into account in how the practice was run.

• Patients could access treatment and urgent and emergency care when required.

• Staff received training appropriate to their roles and were supported in their continued professional development (CPD) by the practice owner.

• Staff we spoke with felt well supported by the practice owner and were committed to providing a quality service to their patients.

• Information from 48 completed Care Quality Commission (CQC) comment cards gave us a positive picture of a friendly, caring, professional and high quality service.

There were areas where the provider could make improvements and should:

• Consider providing an annual statement in relation to infection prevention control required under The Health and Social Care Act 2008: ‘Code of Practice about the prevention and control of infections and related guidance.

• Review the availability of hearing loops for patients who are hard of hearing.

• Review the practice’s audit protocols of various aspects of the service, such as radiography and infection control.

We found the staff were friendly welcoming and informative. The provider had created an atmosphere were team working was promoted. We saw evidence of good communication between staff and patients.

We interviewed three patients who reported they were very happy with the treatment they received at the practice. We observed the patient journey from arrival to departure from the clinic for two patients. At all times the patients were treated with dignity and respect and communication with the patients was good. They reported they had been advised of their treatment options and costs and possible outcomes of their treatment. We noted that all the patients we interviewed would recommend the practice to a friend.

Patients were protected from the risk of infection because appropriate guidance had been followed. We observed that there were effective systems in place to reduce the risk and spread of infection.

We talked individually with each member of staff who reported they felt fully supported by the provider.

A sample of five patient records were observed. The clinical entries were completed by the provider herself. Each record contained full and contemporaneous notes which demonstrated the provider was following current best practice in record keeping.