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Quality improvement

Plan improvement procedure strategy

The Quality Improvement Programme is a suite of tools to support dental practices and their teams in their continuing postgraduate development and education.

This supported development programme helps to identify and meet the educational needs of individuals and dental practice teams. Shared educational experiences provide practice teams with the principles for self-improvement and quality improvement allowing them to adapt and develop according to current national quality plans.

The quality improvement dental educators support practice and team development with in-practice training, practice and personal development plans, use of Maturity Matrix Dentistry and Clinical Audit. The spectra of responsibilities and activities will be amalgamated into a cohesive programme to meet individual and practice team development.

Using these quality improvement tools also contributes to the delivery of prosperity for all, the Welsh Government’s national strategy to build a Wales that is healthy and active, prosperous and secure, ambitious and learning, and united and connected.

Quality improvement programme

The dental section, Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) has been working with 1000 Lives to produce a quality improvement guide for dental teams, to help improve their practices, team working and patient care. Further information regarding the practice development tools is available on this site as well as information regarding national audit projects. If you are interested in finding out more about quality improvement methods for your dental practice, please register your interest by emailing HEIW Dental QI.

Clinical audit graph
CA - clinical audit

HEIW's dental postgraduate section provides and facilitates programmes for continuous professional development (CPD) and quality improvement for individuals and practice teams across Wales.

Designed to smile in-practice

Designed to Smile is the Welsh Government National Oral Health Improvement Programme. HEIW and Dental Public Health Team have developed an e-learning module for dental teams in Wales.

Maturity matrix dentistry

The Maturity Matrix Dentistry (MMD) is a practice development tool for the whole dental team which helps dental teams deliver high quality care for patients.

Oral cancer and disease poster
Mouth cancer

This page provides a range of useful resource links for mouth cancer.

Porth dental center
National audit projects
Human factors
Patient safety and human factors

Dental teams want to provide high quality, safe care for their patients. However patients can occasionally come to harm in all types of healthcare – these are patient safety incidents.

Group of dentists consulting files
Peer review group

Peer groups provide an opportunity for groups of dentists and dental care professionals to review aspects of practice.

Bulbs with personal development stamped
Personal development planning

The General Dental Council (GDC) introduced a new enhanced CPD scheme for dentists in January 2018 and for DCPs in August 2018. The list below details the key changes

QI dental educators
dices with the inscription example
QI project examples
Dental screen
QI tool for ionising radiation

The Dental Section, HEIW has developed a checklist for the use of Ionising Radiation (X-rays) in Primary Dental Care.

Good Clinical Practice
SOSET - skills optimiser tool

The Skills Optimiser Self-Evaluation Tool (SOSET) is a dental practice team development tool, which allows the whole team to focus on how they are addressing a ‘skill-mix’/teamwork approach for the effective delivery of oral healthcare.

Representation of lower dental arch
Wrong tooth extraction

The Dental Section, HEIW (formerly Dental Section of the Wales Deanery), in collaboration with Welsh Government carried out a survey on extraction of the wrong tooth in primary care dental services in Wales.