Let’s say someone has a really severe toothache, and it gets infected. Or they get their teeth knocked out.
Why isn’t there a dentist on call in an ER or whatever?
Our hospital here in Toronto has such a service.
And I think most major cities have a 24 hour emergency dental clinic, ours has one also.
You might want to look in the yellow pages under emergency services or dental services.
Good luck…
Guin - In the 'Burgh, they have dentists on call at Eye & Ear Hospital (adjacent to UPMC Presbyterian) but I don’t know that there’s an emergency room there. I’d imagine that Presby would have access to those same dentists though, if you showed up with that kind of problem, because of the school of dentistry.
Oh-I don’t need one, I was just curious.
A couple hospitals around here that I’ve been in have dental facilities, but I haven’t seen them being used. My assumption is they have a dentist on call that can come in if there is an emergency.
The hospitals I have been affiliated with have always had a dentist on call; It’s just that most of the dentists never felt anything was such an emergency they had to go in at 2 am to care for. So we docs in the ER would give them penicillin and painkillers, and the dentist would see them during business hours.
Dermatologists and opthalmologists as a rule never came in either.
I had a bad toothache a couple of months back, and called the Info-Santé (health information) line. They gave me the number of an emergency dental clinic. I went there, had an x-ray, was told I had a wisdom tooth that had to come out, and was given a prescription for some codeine and antibiotics. I got the tooth yanked a few days later, at a regular medical clinic.
Qadgop, I once ended up in the ER because I had (stupidly) soaked my contact lenses in Visine, having run out of contact solution. I had to have my eyes irrigated for 30 minutes (not pleasant), and they called in an opthalmologist to check out my eyes. This was at the Royal Vic here in Montreal. I guess they did consider it enough of an emergency to call him in.
Two hospitals near me have oral surgeons on staff (or as adjuncts to the staff). So some hospitals do have them.
My sister used to work for an oral surgery practice, and a couple of the docs were on call at a local hospital. They usually got called in for bad traumas, like when one guy got his jaw mashed in in a car accident. I don’t think a hospital would call in a specialist for a wisdom tooth or something, though; they’d probably just give you painkillers and have you see someone during regular office hours.
I’ve seen a couple in Tokyo that didn’t have emergency dental care, but did have a dentist around to take care of their long-term inpatients.
[hijack]I can beat that! One night, long ago, I spent the night in a friend’s college dorm room. I had my contacts in, no case, and no glasses with me. I woke up in the middle of the night, and decided to give my eyes a little relief. I pulled the bottle of rewetting drops out of my backpack (by touch), and planted a few drops in my right eye – whoops, that was the Liquid Paper!
Fortunately, the college had an optometry school with a clinic.
The hospital I work in is right next to the U of Minn dental school. Need a jawbreaker? No problem. 'Course, like Q the M says, you’re better off busting your teeth during normal working hours.
There’s a Dental Hospital here in Dublin, with a walk-in emergency service…you might end up with a student though…
In the hospital where I work, there is a dental clinic that keeps normal business hours, and there is an oral surgeon on call 24/7.
A hospital that can’t keep an oral surgeon close at hand, or any of a number of other specialists, has no business doing emergency trauma work, and the local medical community knows it. The EMTs know the area hospitals well enough they won’t transport an accident victim to a hospital not equipped to deal with their medical issue.
Also, dentists (as opposed to oral surgeons) not being MDs, are by and large useless in an ER. A cavity is not an emergency, and a smashed up jaw is beyond their ability to fix.
Enlist in the military.
V.A. hospitals (at least the ones I’ve worked in) have dental clinics.
They yank lots of decayed teeth.
I got mugged and got a mess of teeth bashed. I went the hospital and they told me to take two tylenol and 4 ibruprofen. So I called a guy I know who is a doctor in another ER. He said exactly the same thing.
It got rid of the pain OK. I think the REAL reason is though most medical insurance (if not all) doesn’t cover Dental. So the hospital would be treating something they would never collect on. For instance I have bridge work done. I paid $2000.00. My friend has dental insurance that covers bridge work and she would have paid only $500.00 (My dental will pay for dentures but not permenent bridges. And I would rather have a bridge.)
So you see if they did the bridge I would hardly be likely to pay. Also my bridge took 3 visits. It is very hard for one dentist to finish anothers work. So let’s say the ER had a dentist. He would start the work and my dentist would have to finish.
Aint no ‘might’ about it. That place gives me the shivers just thinking about it.
Question: Is it different in the U.S.? I also got bashed in the mouth once (sports related, collided with another athlete) and they did indeed have a dentist on call for the ER. They never called him/her in to see me once they x-ray showed that there was still a teensy weensy bit of tooth covering my nerve.
I was told that had my nerve been exposed (ow! ow! ow!) the on-call dentist would have been there to work some magic.
As it was, they told me to be very, very, very careful with my precarious mouth overnight, and my regular dentist rebuilt my tooth the next morning.
Frankly, there just aren’t that many emergencies in fields like dentistry, dermatology, opthalmology, pathology, and so on. A decent-sized metropolitan hospital will have one of each type on call for emergencies, but the types of situations which mandate that these folks actually come in do not happen often. Sometimes the on-call specialist is contacted and will give advice over the phone.
A friend of mine is a dentist in my city. She has often been on-call, and done shifts at the emergency rooms of hospitals. The majority of cases where a dentist was required in an emergency were accident related, and she would have to work not only on teeth but also the on the jaw, and perform emergency facial surgery.