Celebration of Collaboration – Dental subgroup of ESPAUR

In May 2019  year during National Smile Month the dental subgroup of ESPAUR had a ‘celebration of Collaboration’ to recognise the contributions the work of the partners of the subgroup towards improving antimicrobial stewardship since the group was set up in 2015. Dame Sally Davies opened the proceedings and presentations reflected the work of the partners over the last few years which includes:

• The Business Services Authority have increased the granularity of the data on dental prescribing and continue to make improvements with the dental prescribing dashboard hosted on PHE OralHealth.gov. website.
• The AMS toolkit originally developed by Cheshire and Merseyside Local Dental Network was modified and accepted by the partners in the subgroup and circulated nationally through Local Dental Network Chairs. The Office of CDO facilitated dissemination and continues to work with local networks to encourage local implementation.
• The Faculty of General Dental Practitioners (FGDP) have supported AMS actively on social media and have kept evidence-based guidelines for prescribing up to date.
• A large private provider of dental services undertook an audit of some of their providers in collaboration with FGDP .
• The Association of Clinical Oral Microbiologists (ACOM) undertook an audit of secondary care prescribing across the dental hospitals (more below) in collaboration with ESPAUR subgroup, and Association of Dental Hospitals.
• The Faculty of Dental Surgery contributed through the British Association of Oral Surgeons who developed scenario training for secondary care prescribing (in collaboration with ACOM and FGDP)
• Members of the ESPAUR group have worked to align prescribing such as increasing the dose of Metronidazole in the BNF, have worked with developed countries such as endorsing their Infective Endocarditis Prophylaxis guidelines and presented widely across England.

Work continues by partners in the group to update guidance and re-audit dental hospitals. We continue to work to increase the granularity of prescribing data.

Blog Post by

Sandra White, National lead for Dental Public Health |Health Intelligence | Health Improvement Directorate