Page 39 - RADC 2020

HEALTH
Oral Health Awards 2019
Community Engagement Team Award Cpl K Hawthorne, Dental Centre Weeton, Local Oral Health Lead
In Dec 19, the staff at Dental Centre Weeton received the delightful news that they had been awarded the Community Engagement Team Award for Oral Health Promotion 2019.
The award was presented at the Dental Care Professionals Conference, held at Lichfield, to our Regional Practice Manager FS Goss.
During the previous 12 months, the staff at Dental Centre Weeton had put a lot of hard work, interest, and planning into the promotion of the all-important topic of Oral Health. Displaying and preaching our good words and advice to our military patients within the Dental Centre and also at the Regional Unit Health Fairs. Additionally,
the oral health message was given to the children and toddlers at the local Weeton Primary School and Nurseries in the Kirkham area. This, of course, a secondary to the number one priority of ensuring that our soldiers remained dentally fit to deploy.
From catchy display boards in the reception area covering a new topic monthly, to setting up interesting stalls at the Unit Health Fairs, we did our best to push out the advice and knowledge that we live by daily.
When it came to the primary school
and nursery visits, a bit more thinking and planning were needed as the topics had
to be given in a way to keep the young children interested. As we were all a bit
out of tune with being face to face with children in relation to dentistry, it was a great experience for all the team to get involved in. We supplied and took along props, games, stories, and stickers to keep the children amused, which seemed to do the trick. The older kiddies enjoyed hands-on interaction by pretending to be dentists when wearing facemasks and looking at their own teeth with the disposable mouth mirrors. A little sing-song with the toddlers to encourage them to spend more time when brushing went down well and amused us too; it’s not
every day we get to sing nursery rhymes in work!
The teaching staff were all very appreciative of our visits, thanking and inviting us to come back again. They also took on board the advice we gave and agreed to pass on information leaflets to the parents at the end of the day so that they could use them to educate from home.
All visits to the school and nurseries were thoroughly enjoyed by the staff involved, being a little bit out of the norm from our usual adult audience. It gave us all a nice feeling to see those happy smiling little faces. Keeping in mind that these tiny people could well be our next generation
of British Soldiers, starting them off with good oral health now will benefit those in the RADC in time to come.
Dental Centre Weeton now needs to keep up the high standard so that we can try to achieve the Community Engagement Award for a second time in December 2020.
RADC BULLETIN 2020 37